
FT MEADE 

GenCol 1 



\uv. liflT v£+* % 












r -o. ^ o * \ ^ 

•t O 0 » 

■p , ^ 

: w : 



<✓> x 7 * * s s a\^ v i b ^ 

V ,A . v ■* 

* ^ V * ^ 

« 1 < 


A 



0 N 0 


^"*8,^^' .**, ^ ^ H 0 ^ V* 


> 


V 



% ^ : 


-■ WMw * < 

' J tr ^ ^ ■* <& 





*> V <^. <-> 

CV - » 


7 * * S ’ A V I 8 ^ *&■ 



•A v 


0 , * * A „ <, ' 

i t » <t i <p 
0° » V^,.. ' •?, A' * 

W f^Sfe'. ^ ^ 

\°°<. ; 

\« V v.». '*>,' * » > ' * \f 0 ' . - * • r %■' *»"*’ , 



% ,/ 



^ A. 


* ' A-.;- 

- Cl 



\ * 0 



A *4 ^ A, Or 


« C 3 

>s '\ V <*> tJ 





as 


“ <A> ^ > 

*£* 'V , ,■ s ■> A 

^ ^ * v ' 8 * 





% 


* 8 

« A* 

( 

* 

o 

7 O ‘ 

v 



,A 'V 

• \ v -v 



rp . 


N C „ 


o5 C 



l7 W** 5 


\° 




' Ip, <■ 

*- %,A 


s 9 V * > - « A 


<P <\ 

7 % a, CL A 

c - v? ^ 

• J -4 ^ 


’ » I I I " ' s . , , °/- * 0 N o ’ \ 

1 °'. " ,A v'IqjA, % . V 

’Jj 7 \ z 


’" v 0 , X * A° 








'A 


•X V 

o 0 


G° v ^ c °~1° 
0. 


^ y 0 



A' * v 8 ^ ' o 

.A v \ -» <-> 

.\N ^ ^/v/^z, ^ 


* V ^ 




\° 





,5 o 0* 


^ *v. 



: $Ma r ° % <$ 

^■^WA /. 'f s 


.0^ 


° ,c ° 



V<v.„, %»•■'* 

" -et ^ 


* -V ■%, 

Or V, V <?• 


* * ’’> ^ v» I 

<" '■•'•'■ ' > * . . • . ' » • ^ '/ c 0 - , , V 

t * S$r v 'J> o * w ^ 

/ .\ < Jk/Av^p ^ ^ _s5v\\\Vi<fe -r ’5T 



/. 


V- V 



* 

X 00 ^ ^ 

> (A 7 i, ■> aV 

A’ , , * r Ht+ # .o n o \V 
O v S s ^ G> V ^ 

♦ /Vltm/m * <'n \\> « 

O 


.V ^ 



^ c - 




* ^ ^ 

xP \v 


3?^ -. 



K * « I ' “ S ^ r °^r * 3 N 0 ? 

^ , 0 V s ^ C l • 

' v y "fG 

<A ^ o <? 

o C,^ o 

Z ’ 7 


o A>‘ ^ c 


% 



* C'V, \V> 

- ^ 


' o » x * ■ 1 0 


* Cl^> ^ 

^ V 5 % 


>0 C: 



* ** 
</> 



& ■* 



* 

x 


✓58k <s 

- 

§p|gr * 

* ' ^vj} 

1 '^ZAA' 

$ *• 

V 


$ * 


^ - e< ^ - r . ^ U 


* c* 

* V? 

<#V % “ £f ^ ^ 

v I 8 ^ y 0 * - k 4 ^ 0 

V S °o G° V ^ 

+ s **. 

* ^ ^ 

O o 5 ^ * 

- - > \r ^ * 

o_ y * cl* i^> 

<?*. » 0 „ 0 ’ ^ , , %. 

C- V » ' * “ a > 

'P* , r- (3 5 * * 




''V .'■'>< %'°' k * J* c 1 " 1 . 


vX V 
OCT 


*° ^ \ 

- ,.<*■>, ^ 

' ^ * \ V A 


































yy CHARLES STOKES WAYNE-- 


|11 



Rich 

Exquisite 

Dress 


Fabrics 


ilks and 


Dress Goods 


O^O^yO^yO^O^yO 


Strawbridge & Clothier, 



PHILADELPHIA 


Almost every incoming Steamer brings us the best possible repre- 
sentation of whatever is newest and choicest in Dress Fabrics in 
Foreign Countries. 

Our buyers are in constant touch with the most reliable makers of 


and there is not a ! worthy new production in these goods any- 
where — that is not to be found on our counters, almost before 
the loom has ceased operations. 

Our wide-spread reputation as large distributors, as well as 
the fact that we are always among the first buyers in the market, 
gives us the choice of the choicest, and secures for our customers 
many decided advantages in the matter of prices. 

The superiority of our magnificent assortments of Street and 
Evening Silks, and Dress Goods, is best shown by comparison, 
whicli we most cordially invite. 

Our well organized and effiicient Mail Order department is 
at all times prepared to send Samples and all desired information 
to any address. 


I 




The Lady 


and Her Tree 



The Lady and }-[er ’free 


A STORY OF SOCIETY 


BY 

CHARLES STOKES WAYNE 

Author of “ Anthony Kent, ' ’ “Mrs. Lord's 
Moonstone , ’ ’ etc. 



“ Great families of yesterday we show, 

And lords whose parents were, the T,ord knows who.” 



The Vortex Company 


io South 18th Street 


^ A W 


o,U 


Copyright, 1895 


CHARLES STOKES WAYNE 


{All Rights Reserved ) 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 


ANTHONY KENT 

A NOVEE 

“A story which enchains the attention and leaves its 
mark. While the subject is unwholesome, and the atmos- 
phere of the pages more or less morbid, the tale carries a 
trenchant moral, and all the more so because it is not 
insisted upon. The author lets the life of the leading 
character — an attractive, pleasure-loving, responsibility- 
evading man of the world — speak for itself in ultimate 
disillusion and final defeat. ’ ’ — Brooklyn Standard Union. 


MRS. LORD’S MOONSTONE 

A ROMANCE 

“The story is a wonderfully clever one, and a finely 
fanciful idea is treated with much skill and with real 
imaginative power .” — Philadelphia Evening Telegraph. 





Contents. 


CHAPTER 

PAGE 

I 

A Matter of Neighborhood. 

9 

II 

The Return of the Native. 

23 

III 

A Personal in “ The Herald.” 

3 i 

IV 

Marionettes with Broken Strings. . 

45 

V 

A Break in the Party. 

56 

VI 

The Forcing of an Apology. . 

68 

VII 

As a Mutual Friend. 

81 

VIII 

An Eavesdropper. 

9 i 

IX 

Letters of Importance. 

IOI 

X 

A Tardy Resolve. 

hi 

XI 

Out of the World. 

126 

XII 

The Lady in the Brougham. . 

139 

XIII 

Advice — Professional and Otherwise 

149 

XIV 

Husband and Wife. 

158 

XV 

From Homage to Hostility. . 

168 

XVI 

Two Calls of Condolence. 

182 

XVII 

The Contents of a Sea Chest. 

194 

XVIII 

A Visitor tells a Story. 

204 

XIX 

Light after Darkness. 

216 



The Lady and Her Tree 

CHAPTER I 

A MATTER OF NEIGHBORHOOD 

M rs - YORKE was uncomfortably conscious 
of having committed an error. The stout, 
middle-aged gentleman on her right, in an effort 
to make conversation, had enquired concerning 
her impressions of Philadelphia, and she had 
replied, quite unsuspectingly, that she thought 
North Broad street “just heavenly!” There- 
upon the silence of the catacombs had suddenly 
enwrapped the shocked and astonished company, 
each member of which, with the single exception of 
her own husband, sat gazing at her curiously, as 
though she were some hideous Chonek from far 
off Patagonia, rather than a very comely young 
matron from the neighboring isle of Manhattan. 
Even Mrs. Pemberton’s phlegmatic butler stopped 
for an instant in his round of plate- changing, and 


io The Lady arid Her Tree. 

an ill-disguised sneer flitted across his clean- 
shaven features. 

‘ ‘ I dare say ! ’ ’ broke in her hostess, j ust as 
the stillness was becoming embarassing ; “ I have 
heard that it is an admirable place for bicycle 
practice,” and she glanced invitingly at a fair- 
haired, snub-nosed, girl of muscular appearance, 
midway down the table, who, taking the hint, 
added with a laugh : 

“ O, dear, \es ! I actually learned to ride up 
there last Spring. Jorkins would take up my 
wheel ; and I would go up in the brougham. It 
was so entirely secluded, you know. I didn’t 
mind falls a bit.” 

“We were thinking,” Mr. Newland Yorke 
remarked, from his place on the right of Mrs. 
Pemberton, and utterly unmindful of the chill 
that the mere mention of the thoroughfare had 
provoked, “of taking a house, there; but if 
it is as secluded as Miss Bassett says — ” 

“My dear fellow,” interrupted Pemberton, 
from the foot of the table, “ you wouldn’t see a 
soul there from year’s end to year’s end. It is 
out of the world — out of the world.” And then, 
by way of apology, he turned to Mrs. Brokaw, on 
his left, and explained that Mr. and Mrs, Yorke, 


The Lady and Her Tree. n 

being absolute strangers in the city, could not be 
expected to understand arbitrary distinctions as 
to neighborhoods and streets. 

Mrs. Yorke was not a little perplexed, and her 
husband, had he stopped for a moment to con- 
sider the subject, would have been not less so. 
She had feared at first that North Broad street 
was disreputable ; the home of the half world, 
and the resort of the .socially depraved. But the 
remarks of Miss Bassett had scattered these sus- 
picions, and she was vainly trying to understand 
how it was possible that there should be such soli- 
tude where she had seen so many fine residences. 

“Mr. Brokaw,” she said at last, addressing 
the stout, middle-aged gentleman on her right, 
whose question had indirectly involved her in her 
present plight, “would you mind telling me 
the objection to North Broad street? ” 

Mr. Brokaw, whose wife enjoyed the distinction 
of being what is known as a society leader, stopped 
with his fork poised midway between his plate 
and his lips. 

“ I should be delighted, my dear Mrs. Yorke,” 
he replied, with some dignity, “ but the fact is I 
know nothing whatever about the street. I have 
never been through it, save once last spring when 


12 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


I rode atop a coach from this city to New York.” 

“But why?” she pursued, still more puzzled 
by this ignorance of what seemed to her by far 
the most imposing street in all the city; “ you are 
a Philadelphian, are you not? You have lived 
here for some years at all events, I suppose.” 

“ I have lived here all my life,” he answered, 
proudly, ‘ ‘ as did my ancestors before me. My 
grandfather was a member of the City Council in 
the days when it was an honor to hold a seat in 
that body ; and my great grandfather was on the 
staff of General Washington. I have on the 
walls of my library a family tree by which I can 
trace my ancestry back seventeen generations.” 

Mrs. Yorke failed to suppress altogether the 
amusement that this little speech caused her. 

“And you don’t know anything about North 
Broad street? ” she asked. 

Mr. Brokaw, who detected the touch of raillery 
in her words, was visibly annoyed. His face 
crimsoned and he winked nervously several times 
in rapid succession. 

‘ North Broad street,” he said at last, a little 
tartly, “ is impossible. Anything that is north is 
impossible.” 

“ But why impossible? ” 



The Lady and Her Tree. 13 

He paused for a moment while the butler refilled 
his glass. Then he turned to her, and the sin- 
cerity that was in her eyes softened his resent- 
ment. 

“I will tell you,” he said: “ nouveau riche , 
plebeian, parvenu, bourgeois, philistine.” 

He spoke with some feeling, emphasizing each 
word with a tap of his fork-handle upon the dam- 
ask table cloth. 

‘ ‘ How stupid of me not to have guessed ! ’ ’ ex- 
claimed Mrs. Yorke, in a tone of self-abasement. 
“ How ignorant of me not to have known ! If I 
am not blushing it is because I have been taught 
that to confess an error is admirable. It is an 
avowal that I am wiser to-day than I was yester- 
day. O, how glad I am, Mr. Brokaw, that you 
have set me right! Only to think, we might ac- 
tually have taken a house there, and have gone 
there to live. ’ ’ 

“ Pardon me, but you are mistaken,” returned 
Mr. Brokaw, gallantly, “you could never have 
gone there to live. I am sure of it. Your in- 
stinct would have warned you against a step .so 
suicidal.” 

The dinner had been a somewhat hazardous 
experiment on the part of Mrs. Pemberton, and 



H 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


she was still anxiously nervous concerning it. 
Mr. and Mrs. Yorke were both utter strangers. 
Mr. Yorke had recently become associated with 
Mr. Pemberton in business, and a week prior to 
this gathering had brought his wife to Philadel- 
phia for the winter. Mr. Pemberton had sug- 
gested that a dinner in honor of the Yorke advent 
would be appropriate, and Mrs. Pemberton, after 
a little demur, had acquiesced. At her hus- 
band’s request, she had called upon Mrs. Yorke, 
at the Stratford, and despite a preconceived anti- 
pathy, had been charmed by the newcomer’s per- 
sonality. 

Mrs. Pemberton was a tall woman with strong 
features. People had been wont to tell her that 
she resembled the Empress Eugenie, and she had 
not been slow to accept the suggestion and to 
add, as far as possible, to a natural similarity of 
features by copying from photographs the favorite 
coiffures of Her Imperial Highness. Mrs. Yorke, 
she observed, was quite as tall as herself, but less 
matronly, being young enough, so far as appear- 
ance went, to be her own daughter. There was 
something about the perfect oval of her face, too, 
and the plain, yet not severe, way in which she 
dressed her abundant light brown hair that 


The Lady and Her Tree . 15 

won Mrs. Pemberton’s approbation, and the easy 
grace of her movements and manner was by no 
means lost upon the visitor. In the course of 
conversation, Mrs. Pemberton learned that Mrs. 
Yorke knew many ot the best people in New York 
society. Her husband was related in some way 
to the Schermerhorns, and among her most inti- 
mate friends were the Astorbilts, the Vandastors, 
the Manhattans, and the Gradley-Spartans. 

Relying upon these facts, Mrs. Pemberton had 
ventured to invite a favored few of her own par- 
ticular set to meet Mr. and Mrs. Newland Yorke. 
She was, however, by no means unaware of the 
hesitancy that exists among the social elect of the 
Quaker city to take up strangers, and when six 
out of the seven whom she had bidden sent ac- 
ceptances, she was as much surprised as pleased. 
The young gentleman that forwarded his regrets 
explained that he was in training for foot ball as 
a “sub” on the Varsity team, and at the last 
moment Mrs. Pemberton replaced him with young 
Montie Willington, a youthful widower who be- 
longed to the Four in Hand club, and wrote 
newspaper articles for fun. That the Brokaws 
had accepted was, she thought, a subject for 
special gratulation. Mrs. Brokaw managed the 


1 6 The Lady and Her Tree . 

Tuesday Dances, which, next to the Assemblies, 
are recognized as the most fashionable functions 
of the season, and should the Yorkes succeed in 
making a favorable impression in that direction, 
their social success, Mrs. Pemberton told herself, 
w T ould be at once established. The other guests 
included Dr. Dick Turpin, who endeavored to 
maintain the reputation he had achieved as being 
the “fastest” man in the distinguished Turpin 
family ; Miss Logan, a somewhat antiquated 
spinster, who was regarded as a walking social 
encyclopedia ; Miss Bassett, who not only rode a 
bicycle, but rode to hounds with the best 
men of the Radnor Hunt; and Mrs. Martineau, 
another New York importation, whose beauty had 
won her social recognition. Young Tad Pember- 
ton, the son of the household, sat opposite to 
Miss Bassett, and discussed with her the advan- 
tages to be derived by the women members of the 
Centaur Bicycle club adopting a bloomer uni- 
form, much to the annoyance of his mother, who, 
in spite of her prominence in society, still held 
some rather conservative ideas as to topics suit- 
able for debate in mixed company. 

The North Broad street episode had distressed 
her beyond measure. She had observed Mr. 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


17 


Brokaw’ s evident annoyance, and had de 
plored what she regarded as a lack of tact on the 
part of Mrs. Yorke in pressing her enquiries in 
the face of the gentleman’s palpable disinclination 
to talk upon the subject. Moreover, the dinner 
was not up to the average. Her cook, she real- 
ized from the expression of her husband, had 
failed w*ith the ducks, and the terrapin was not of 
the proper savor. The heat of the room and the 
odor of the roses made her head ache ; and, as if 
to add the last straw to the load of her woes, one 
of the pink shades on the candelabra suddenly 
burst into flame and toppled off, burning great 
holes in a lace table ornament that she had pur- 
chased at a bargain at the Chicago Fair, and that 
she knew she could not replace for four times the 
money. 

Dr. Turpin was asking Mrs. Brokaw what kind 
of a time she had had at Saranac Lake, and Mr. 
Brokaw was telling Mrs. Yorke about the won- 
derfully dry summer at Richfield Springs. Mr. 
Yorke had entered into a conversation across the 
table with Mrs. Martineau on the relative pleas- 
ures of life in Philadelphia and New York, inter- 
larded, of course, with the usual covert slings at 
the Quaker city’s somnolence; and Miss Logan 


1 8 The Lady and Her Tree. 

had just enquired of Montie Willington whether 
he meant to enter for the four-in-hand driving 
contest at the New York horse show, when Mrs. 
Pemberton, catching her husband’s eye, gave the 
pre-arranged signal, and the company rose. 

Once the ladies were gone, the men resumed 
their places in somewhat easier attitudes, 
drawing out their chairs, crossing their legs, and 
lighting cigarettes and cigars. Pemberton, pere 
suggested a specially imported cognac that he had 
run across abroad, and for a few minutes com- 
mendatory terms floated to him from the lips 
of the would be connaisseurs . Then Yorke and 
his host and Brokaw and the doctor formed them- 
selves into a little group, dilating upon the mer 
its and demerits of several recognized brands of 
brandy; while young Pemberton and Willing- 
ton, with heads close together, sang to each other 
praises of Mrs. Yorke’ s beauty, and with contrast- 
ing irreverence discussed in whispers the possible 
pregnability of her virtue. Young Pemberton 
had noticed particularly, he said, that her under 
lip was temptingly full, which, he argued, be- 
trayed a passionate disposition. Mr. Willington 
admitted that he had not especially observed that 
feature, but that her eyes, and the way she used 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


19 


them, indicated to him that she was not averse to 
a quiet flirtation. He had, moreover, detected a 
tendency on her part to sudden flushes of color, 
which, in his varied experience, had always gone 
hand in hand with a warm temperament. The 
combination he regarded as somewhat promising, 
but he was a little disappointed to have discovered 
that she was anything but a lover of wine, her 
glass having not once been drained during dinner. 
On the whole, he feared that she was one of those 
women, the road to whose boudoir lay only 
through the church door. 

When, at length, these youthful solons repaired 
to the drawing-room, Willington lost no time in 
finding a place by Mrs. Yorke’s side. He was a 
young man, but his life had been so rapid that 
into the twenty-three years of its span he had 
crowded considerably more in the way of variety 
than frequently makes up the career of men twice 
his age. He had been married and left a widower 
before he cast his first vote ; he had tumbled into 
an alliance with a chorus girl that it had cost his 
father several thousand dollars to extricate him 
from ; and during the past year he had, ac- 
cording to common rumor, broken the hearts of 
at least three society debutantes. He was a 


20 The Lady and Her Tree. 

handsome, fair, beardless youth ; tall, lithe- 
limbed and broad shouldered ; and Mrs. Yorke, 
like all women that came into contact with him, 
was more or less attracted by his pleasing per- 
sonal^. 

“ I have been trying to think, Mr. Willing- 
ton,” she said, as he took a place beside her, 
“where I have met you. Your face and 3^our 
name are both very familiar.” 

“I’m sure we have met somewhere,” acqui- 
esced the young man ; though, in point of fact, he 
had not the slightest recollection of ever having 
seen Mrs. Yorke until that evening. ‘ ‘ Were } t ou 
at the Clarence- Prescotts’ dance during Horse- 
Show week last autumn in New York? ” 

“No,” thoughtfully, “O, no. It was not so 
recently as that. It seems it was long ago ; 
when I was a child. I was a mere baby when I 

left Philadelphia, but -” 

“ Left Philadelphia ! ” repeated Willington in 
surprise. ‘ ‘ Do you mean you were born here ? ’ ’ 
Mrs. Yorke laughed at his astonishment. 

“Of course. Is there anything so wonderful 
in that ? ’ * 

“ O, no ; certainly not ; but — well, you know, we 
had all been told you were from New York — a 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


21 


New York girl, don’t you see. Where did you 
live here ? ’ ’ 

“ I haven’t the slightest idea. I was not over 
seven when we moved away. Now I think of it, 
though, it seems to me it was a street with a 
double name.” 

‘ ‘And your name was ? ’ ’ 

“ Lawrence — Katharine Lawrence.” 

Mr. Willington indulged in a long, low, half- 
smothered whistle. 

“Well, well!” he exclaimed delightedly, 
“now I know it. Why, we used to live next 
door to each other.” 

“Where?” 

“ Here.” 

“But on what street ? Tell me the name of the 
street ; that will bring it all back to me.” 

Mrs. Martineau had seated herself at the piano, 
and was turning over some music. 

“ Sh ! ” warned Willington, “ wait a second.” 

Presently she found the composition of which 
she was in search, and struck a resounding chord. 

“I must whisper it to you,” the young man 
continued, “and don’t you, for the world, repeat 
it.” 

Mrs. Yorke stared at him in amazement. 


22 The Lady and Her Tree . 

“Spring Garden street,’ ’ he whispered, so low 
that she scarcely heard him. 

“Yes, yes,” she cried excitedly ; “ that is it — 
Spr ” 

Willington coughed loudly, and the name was 
drowned in the cough. 

“I told you not to repeat it,” he said, chid- 
ingly, as though she had committed a crime. 
“ For heaven’s sake, don’t ever let it be known 
that we were born there. It would mean our 
social ruin.” 

“But as I remember it,” added Mrs. Yorke, a 
little vexed at his tone, ’ ’ it was a very beautiful 
street, with large, elegant houses, and exceedingly 
nice people lived there. 

“ O, yes, of course,” replied Willington, “it 
was, and is, all of that.” 

“Then why ” 

“Because, Mrs. Yorke,” and he spoke very 
seriously, “it is like North Broad street — it is 
up-town .” 


CHAPTER II 


the return of the native 

r "pHE entry of the Yorkes into the somewhat 
narrow life of the Quaker city had been 
brought about by a combination of circumstances 
more or less fortuitous. For two years stocks 
had not gone Yorke’s way. He had foolishly at- 
tempted to battle against the tide of speculation, 
and had ended by being thrown up, weak and 
helpless, upon the reef of financial disability. Mrs. 
Yorke had, not unnaturally, fretted under the 
reverses that reduced them from affluence to what 
seemed to her very like penury, and she was all 
the more difficult to mollify in that it was through 
no fault of hers that matters had so shaped them- 
selves. Yorke, on the other hand, was possessed 
of a distinctly hopeful disposition. The mis- 
fortunes that had crowded upon him were of suf- 
ficient magnitude to have caused thoughts of self- 
destruction in men morally his superiors ; but the 
fits of despondency from which he suffered at 
times were never of twenty-four hours’ duration ; 


24 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


the shadows that clouded his horizon at night 
disappeared with the first flush of morning, and 
the future invariably held for him a promise of 
better things. 

Mrs. Yorke had opposed the removal to Phila- 
delphia, but Yorke had deemed it advisable for 
two reasons that he regarded as good and suf- 
ficient. In the first place, he had been tendered 
the vice-presidency of a manufacturing company 
there in which he was already, to some extent, 
pecuniarily interested, and with an accompanying 
salary which, under the circumstances, was most 
tempting. In the second place, it was impossible 
for him to live in New York as he had lived be- 
fore misfortune overtook him, and his pride was 
such that he rebelled against making any further 
exhibition of his poverty before his friends than 
was absolutely unavoidable. 

To overcome this latter objection to continuing 
their residence in New York, Mrs. Yorke had 
suggested that they should go abroad, as Ameri- 
cans frequently do under similar conditions ; but 
the proposition was met with the unanswerable 
argument that their income was not sufficient 
even to rent a villa out of London, or a reasonably 
comfortable apartment in a good neighborhood in 


The Lady and Her Tree . 25 

Paris. In order to live at all, York declared, it 
was necessary that he should earn the funds to 
pay the bills, and he saw no way of accomplish- 
ing this more successfully than by accepting the 
offer of the Philadelphia corporation. 

For Mrs. Yorke, the city of her birth offered 110 
allurements. It had, indeed, since her early 
youth been something of a bugbear to her, and 
she returned to it resolved that she would dislike 
it. At the tender age of seven she had been 
thrown by her mother’s second marriage into the 
companionship of three step brothers and two 
step-sisters, typical New York children with an 
abiding faith in the superiority of their own me- 
tropolis, and a well-grounded antipathy to every- 
thing foreign. First their patronage, and after- 
wards their undisguised ridicule of the city 
whence she came, aroused in her an antagonism 
that found expression in an earnest defence of the 
place of her nativity. The odds, however, were 
too heavily against her, and in time she surren- 
dered completely, even vowing, finally, a lasting 
allegiance to the home of her adoption and that of 
her new-found kinsfolk. Her father’s name had 
been Fawrence ; but, as was very natural, she 
came to be known by that of her step-father, 


26 The Lady and Her Tree . 

which was Van Vrancken, and as Miss Katherine 
Van Vrancken, Newland Yorke wooed, won and 
wed her. 

The marriage was regarded by her people as a 
most advantageous one. The Van Vranckens, 
while they lived well and kept up a semblance of 
prosperity, were really far from wealthy. Mr. 
Van Vrancken’ s business in recent years had de- 
clined, owing to the sharp competition of more 
progressive and energetic concerns in the same 
line of trade. His income was scarcely sufficient 
to meet current expenditures, and to meet the 
expenses that the wedding of his step-daughter 
had entailed, a mortgage on his house in Wash- 
ington Place had been necessary. 

Mr. Yorke, on the other hand, was at that time 
a young man of independent fortune, as his father 
had been before him. While not so active in so- 
ciety as some of his fellows, he was, nevertheless, 
received at the best houses, and was a member 
of half a dozen clubs. He had met Miss Van 
Vrancken in the Adirondacks, while visiting at 
one of those luxurious lounging places that, for 
want of a more accurately descriptive term, are 
known as camps. The informality of the life, 
where both were guests of a mutual friend, 


The Lady and Her Tree. 27 

was calculated to enhance intimacy, and at the 
end of a fortnight there was an understanding, 
that in the autumn developed into an engagement. 
The following spring, the cards were issued and 
the wedding bells chimed. 

At the breakfast that followed the ceremony, 
Mr. Van Vrancken made a speech. In the course 
of his remarks he was guilty of using the unpar- 
donably trite expression that the bride and bride- 
groom were admirably suited to each other, the 
only redeeming feature of the utterance being its 
absolute truth. In marriage, antitheses aregen- 
erally conceded to be all desirable, and in this in- 
stance, antitheses were most noticeable. Yorke 
was swarthy as a Spaniard, tall as a grenadier and 
muscular as an Atlantean. His bride was tall, 
too, but fair, small-boned and slender, with the 
graceful outline of a Psyche, and the dimples of a 
Bartolozzi cherub. In disposition and tempera- 
ment too, they were utterly unlike : Yorke was 
easy-going, credulous, reckless, while the woman 
that had just promised to love, honor and obey 
him was ambitious, energetic, quick-tempered and 
revengeful. These words paint their characters 
in broad, colorful dashes, but the man and the 
woman were possessed also, as are all of us, of 


28 The Lady and Her Tree. 

those minor characteristics that veil, usually, our 
underlying qualities, and tone them in a way that 
makes us not only bearable, but often genial 
members of society. 

For two years the YorkeS traveled in foreign 
lands. On their return they opened a house on 
upper Fifth avenue, where they entertained, and, 
as is the rule in this world of compensation, they 
were entertained in return. In the summer they 
took a cottage at Narragansett Pier, where Mrs. 
Yorke’s beauty was much talked about, and 
whence, each week, letters went forth to the 
newspapers describing her gowns, not omitting 
even her bathing costume, which was pictured in 
a syndicate article, published in all the great cities 
of the land. 

Meanwhile, Yorke found much more to interest 
him in the financial columns of the daily prints 
than in these gossiping screeds of the resort cor- 
respondents. Plis fortune, which was invested 
chiefly in bonds and stocks, had shrunk several 
hundred thousand dollars in the space of six 
months. Two of the railroads in which he was 
most largely interested had gone into the hands 
of receivers, and another had stopped paying 
dividends and threatened also to default on its in- 


The Lady and Her Tree. 29 

terest charges. Each day a turn in the tide was 
, hoped for, but the sweep of disaster seemed to be 
without end. Speculative efforts to retrieve in 
some part his losses resulted only in additional 
calamity ; and what were at first mere laughing 
hints to his wife, that thereafter they should be 
compelled to be more careful of the pennies, came 
eventually to be stern statements that retrench- 
ment was a necessity. It was during this period 
that Yorke first tasted the cup of despondency ; 
but he merely sipped it. Happiness was his shad- 
ow. The remembrance of it followed him ; the 
hope of it went before. Each dawn brought to 
him new plans for the future, and over each plan 
hung a golden aureole. Of all these the Phila- 
delphia proposition’s crown appeared to him the 
brightest. In .spite of Mrs. Yorke’ s opposition he 
reached out for it, and the removal to the Quaker 
city was an incident of its adoption. 

During the first month of her sojourn in 
Philadelphia, Mrs. Yorke’ s discontent did not 
abate. It was early autumn, warm and enervat- 
ing, and it appeared to her that the sun shone less 
brightly, and that the rain fell more dismally than 
she had ever knowrn them to do in New York. 
During this time the Yorkes lived at the Stratford, 


30 The Lady a 7 id Her Tree. 

but as tlie expense was great and the accommoda- 
tions were inadequate, Yorke suggested that Mrs. 
Yorke should look about for unfurnished apart- 
ments. In this direction there was very little 
choice. Rooms by the score were to be had on 
the fashionable streets, but they were usually in 
old-fashioned houses, large, liigh-ceiled and for- 
forbidding; and a restaurant being the exception, 
it was necessary to go out for one's meals. This 
was, in Mrs. Yorke’ s eyes, an insuperable objec- 
tion, and she accordingly turned her attention to 
the large apartment houses, of which there were 
but four or five. For a day she wavered between 
the Bonaparte and the Salisbury, and ended by 
choosing the latter, because the building was the 
more imposing and possessed what she described 
as ‘ ‘ more of a metropolitan air. ” The rooms she 
chose, however, were but five in number and as 
small as dovecotes. From New York, a specified 
portion of her stored furniture, pictures and bric- 
a-brac, were shipped over, and she spent a Jmsy 
week in arranging and rearranging it. Having 
secured an effect partially satisfactory, she sent 
out cards for a tea, and society, as much from 
sheer curiosity as from any other motive, made it 
a point to attend. 


CHAPTER III 


A PERSONAL IN ‘ ‘ THE HERALD ’ * 

the day of Mrs. Yorke’s tea, Mr. Tad Pem- 
berton, as usual, arose late. For the first 
time in a week he had slept under the parental roof, 
and the conscious virtue of this rare action was a 
grateful solace to his somewhat perturbed spirit. 
For upward of a twelve-month young Pember- 
ton had been leading a life that it were charitable 
to describe as merely irregular. He had made so 
bold as to snap his fingers in the face of society, 
and society, he had been made aware, w T as not un- 
resentful. At the open air Horse Show, on St. 
Martin’s Green, at Wissahickon Heights, he had 
thrown into society’s teeth a yellow-tressed crea- 
ture, who had, the week before, been singing 
risque songs on the stage of one of the continuous 
performance theatres, and according to the gossip 
of men that were less bold, had also been en- 
gaged to perform at a New York roof garden dur- 
ing the summer. Her loud laughter had been 
echoed back by young Pemberton into the very 


32 The Lady and Her Tree. 

ears of innocent society debutantes with whom he 
had waltzed at the Dancing Class and the Assem- 
blies, and the dear girls had blushed, and hidden 
their faces with their programmes, in shocked em- 
barrassment. As a result of this, and of florid 
stories of his subsequent behaviour in New York, 
where he chose to spend most of the warm 
weather, he was very generally cut by a certain 
element when, on one or two occasions, he 
dropped into Bar Harbor, and appeared at the 
International Cricket Match in the autumn. A 
young matron who chanced to be a fellow guest 
on the coach he was invited to adorn, froze him 
to the marrow with a speechless stony stare, 
when he ventured to address her. 

For a time the young man, depending upon his 
family’s social position, was wont to ignore these 
sporadic evidences of disapproval ; but there 
had lately come to him rumors that he was to be 
dropped from the Tuesday Dances, and that it 
was doubtful, in view of the opposition that he 
had awakened, that he would this year re- 
ceive the Assembly book. But for a certain 
unforeseen circumstance, even these reports 
would have held for him little of terror. Since 
the advent of the Yorkes, however, he was 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


33 


most anxious not only to hold his own place in 
society, but to retain his influence. Mrs. Yorke’s 
beauty fascinated him, and it was his earnest 
desire to place her, in some way, under obligations 
to him. He had little doubt that she and her 
husband would be on the list for the Tuesday 
Dances, since his mother had taken care to pre- 
sent her to Mrs. Brokaw, but he was by no means 
so well assured that the Assembly managers 
would recognize the newcomers, unless they were 
especially reminded, too, by someone whose word 
possessed some weight. With his own position 
in the balance, he understood that it would be use- 
less to intercede for another, and yet he had deter- 
mined that the obligation he desired to impose 
upon Mrs. Yorke, could be imposed in no more 
effectual way than this. 

With this end in view he had pulled himself 
up suddenly, and had resolved, for a time at 
least, to be more discreet. His visits to the quiet, 
inconspicuous, dark red brick house on South 
Fifteenth street, where, since the close of the New 
York roof garden season, Miss Dolly Foster had 
been snugly ensconced in a pair of rooms for 
which young Pemberton had paid the rent, were 
to be less frequent. For the present he would 


34 The Lady and Her Tree. 

not be seen with lier in the street, at the theatre, 
or in the Park. He had thought of sending her 
away on a visit to New York, but she had de- 
clined to go unless he accompanied her, and of 
course that was out of the question. 

On the night before the day of Mrs. Yorke’ s 
tea he had sat late in the Bellevue cafe, drinking 
Scotch and soda with one of the Assembly man- 
agers, Mr. C. Norton Phelps, a tall, soldierly-look- 
ing person, with the accent and manners of an offi- 
cer in the British army. Mr. Phelps was several 
years young Pemberton’s senior, and a man of the 
world! The conversation, that had at first been 
desultory, eventually turned on women, as con- 
versations between men are apt to turn, and 
young Pemberton asked : 

“ You’ve met Mrs. Yorke, haven’t you ?” 

“ Yorke ! # ” repeated Mr. Phelps, as he lighted 
a cigarette, “Yorke! Let me see. That’s not 
the fat woman that made such a sensation at 
Devon Inn with a decollete gown that failed to 
justify the reliance she placed on it? ” 

“ Good God ! No ! ’’ returned Pemberton in 

disgust. ‘ ‘ She’s from New York. She and- ’ ’ 

“I’ve heard of it! ” interrupted his companion, 
frowning a little, ‘ ‘ Perhaps you had better not 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


35 


mention the subject to me. I don’t want to know 
too much about it. A woman that you know 
very well wrote me the other day that on account 
of this affair of yours she had hoped that — Well, 
she said that she could not permit her daughters 
to go to the Assemblies this year, if you were 
there.” 

Young Pemberton stared at the speaker in 
amazement. Then, suddenly, a light broke on 
him, and the situation was revealed. Phelps was 
evidently thinking of Dolly. It was most unfortu- 
nate that this subject should have cropped up 
just at the moment that he most -wished it for- 
gotten. However, he did what he could to put 
matters straight. 

“No, no, no,” he said, impatiently, “you’re 
away off the track. Yorke is vice-president of our 
company, and his wife is a very charming woman. 
They’re living at the Salisbury.” 

“ I beg her pardon,” said Phelps ; and then, 
after a pause, “ No, I haven’t met her.” 

“ I see you haven’t,” added Pemberton, lacon- 
ically. He recognized now that it was useless to 
press the subject. He would, in all probability, 
do more harm than good by pursuing it, so he 
turned to a new theme, and asked Mr. Phelps 


36 The Lady and Her Tree. 

if he proposed going to the foot-ball game on 
Saturday. m 

At one o’clock the Bellevue cafe closed, and 
they adjourned to the Philadelphia Club. It was 
three, when young Pemberton let himself into 
the family mansion on West Rittenhouse square. 
The evening had not been a profitable one, he 
told himself, and he felt that he really had very 
little to offer Mrs. Yorke when he should see her 
at her tea. Time and circumstances, however, 
make opportunities that cannot be foreseen ; and 
there are more ways than one of forging the 
shackles of obligation. 

Young Pemberton breakfasted at the Ritten- 
house Club, which was convenient, and while 
waiting for his grilled kidneys, glanced casually 
over the columns of the New York Herald. With 
the perverseness of his nature he began at the 
last page, and ran through the paper to the first, 
on the first column of which, being the last that 
his eye fell upon, he found the only item of in- 
terest in the whole journal. It was an advertise- 
ment under the head of ‘ ‘ Personals, ’ ’ and it 
possessed for him such a suddenly-evolved, yet 
deep, concern, that he read it over and over 
again, smiling each time more broadly and pleas- 


The Lady and Her Tree . 37 

edly. The copy that he held in his hand, in spite 
of the fact that it was the property of the club, 
would have gone into his pocket had it not been 
that it was attached to an ungainly binder. His 
impudence was not equal to abstracting it, and he 
accordingly sent out a waiter to purchase a Herald 
for him at the nearest newstand. 

Armed with this, he rode down Chestnut street 
to the office of the company of which his father 
was president, Yorke, vice-president, and him- 
self, a director. These were located on the upper 
floor of the Drexel Building and were elaborate 
rooms, handsomely furnished, a general office in 
the centre, with the private offices of the several 
officers grouped around it . He knocked at Y orke’ s 
door, but there was no response. It was after 
one o’clock, and a pretty stenographer from her 
place as a typewriter in the general office informed 
him that Mr. Yorke and his father were both out 
at luncheon. 

Nothing could have pleased him better. He 
entered the vice-president’s room, and taking the 
copy of the Herald from his pocket, folded it with 
the first column outward, and placed it upon 
Yorke’ s desk in a most conspicuous position. He 
stood for a moment contemplating his work and 


38 The Lady and Her Tree. 

wondering whether the advertisement that had so 
quickly caught his own eye would as swiftly at- 
tract the attention of Mr. Newland Yorke. Yorke 
might, he feared, in the hurry of business, sweep 
the paper to one side and into the waste basket, 
and yet he hesitated about indicating more defi- 
nitely that it had been placed there with a pur- 
pose. 

As he turned the subject over, an inspiration 
came to his rescue. He sat down at the desk, 
dipped a pen deep into the ink, and, holding it 
carefully and accurately above the paper, allowed 
a large blot to drop upon the margin at the side 
of the few lines that he particularly wished Yorke 
to see. The blot', of course, might have been an 
accident. Then he scribbled a line to Yorke ask- 
ing whether he desired .seats for the football game 
on Saturday. It was necessary to account for 
his presence in this office, should questions be 
asked, and the paper might provoke enquiry. 
The note would explain the newspaper, left there 
by accident, and it would also give an excuse for 
the blot upon it, without suggesting — at least with 
any degree of certainty, — an intention. 

On his way to the street, young Pemberton 
purchased another copy of the Herald , and smiled 


The Lady and Her Tree. 39 

sardonically as he stored it snugly away in a hip 
pocket. He spent the afternoon at the Racquet 
Club, and when he arrived at the Salisbury, the 
clock in the white tower of the old State House 
was striking five, and behind its four faces the 
light had been lit. 

The street in front of the house was a crush of 
private carriages and the throng in Mrs. Yorke’s 
bijou drawing room had bubbled over into her 
lilliputian boudoir. Miss Cottelin, a tailor-made 
girl, whom Montie Willington had once in para- 
phrase described as ‘ ‘ the lass of fashion with the 
moulded form,” was bidding her hostess good- 
bye as young Pemberton entered ; and the usual 
exchange of civilities was in progress. 

“Your rooms are lovely! ” the “ lass of fash- 
ion” remarked. 

“ So glad you think so,” returned Mrs. Yorke 
for the twenty-fourth time inside of an hour, in 
reply to the same observation. “Do come and 
see them sometime when everything is not hidden 
behind beautiful gowns. ’ ’ 

Young Pemberton extended his gray-gloved 
hand. 

“ I came late, hoping to run across Yorke,” 
he said, ir apology for the hour. 


40 The Lady and Her Tree. 

“ How very unkind of you! It is my tea, you 
know. ’ ’ 

“ O, ah; yes,” he added, a little flustered, 
“when Yorke gives a poker party or something, 
I’ll come early, hoping to run across you.” 

“ Perversity, thy name is Pemberton,” laughed 
Mrs. Yorke, as .she poured tea for him into a 
Louis Philippe cup that she had bought at a junk 
shop in the Rue de Rivoli, when in Paris on her 
honeymoon journey. “ Mr. Yorke won’t be 
here,” she pursued, regretfully, placing a cube 
of sugar on the saucer; “ he was called away sud- 
denly to New York. When one is in business, 
you know, one’s time is not one’s own.” 

“ I dare say.” 

“You were never in business, I suppose, Mr. 
Pemberton ? ’ ’ 

“ Business,” he repeated between sips; “well, 
it depends, you know, on what you call business. 
I’ve often been called suddenly to New York.” 

Mrs. Yorke looked at him with a question in 
her deep blue eyes. There was something in his 
tone that she did not altogether understand. 
Before she could pursue the subject further, how- 
ever, Mrs. Martineau had come up to say good- 
bye, and then Miss Bassett ; and, after a moment, 


The Lady and Her Tree. 41 

Mrs. Brokaw, whose departure seemed to -be the 
signal for a general leave-taking. 

Young Pemberton finished his tea, and placing 
the cup on the dainty little mahogany and gold 
Empire table, walked over to where Miss Eogan, 
in a gown of gray and white with black lace, 
ages too youthful for the adornment of her with- 
ered charms, was standing with her back to the 
now rapidly thinning company and gazing out of 
the window. 

“I was just thinking,” she said, when she 
had touched the hand that the young man offered, 

‘ ‘ that if we were to leave out of our conversation 
all scandal, gossip and empty compliments, how 
frightfully dull we should all seem! ” 

“You could hear a pin drop,” acquiesced 
Pemberton. 

“Exactly; and yet I’ll venture to say that 
when you entered this room, you could scarcely 
hear your own voice.” 

“I couldn’t.” 

“ From which you would be perfectly right in 
arguing that ’ ’ 

“ Scandal, gossip and empty compliments were 
on every one’s tongue, ’ ’ Pemberton interrupted. 

“If we were forbidden to speak well of our- 


42 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


selves and evil of others we’d soon become a com- 
munity of mutes, ” continued the spinster. ‘"By 
the way, have you heard about Mrs. Charley 
Bright ? Someone saw her at the Girard avenue 
theatre the other night with Nellie Farrell and 
two Philadelphia Club men. The Girard avenue 
theatre of all places ! Girard avenue, you know, 
is somewhere up-town — way up-town ; and after 
that, where do you suppose they went ? To some 
impossible beer saloon — up stairs, by the ladies’ 
entrance — and drank beer. What is society com- 
ing to ? ” 

“Ask where it is going to, and the answer sug- 
gests itself,” returned her companion. 

Miss Logan giggled and displayed a double-row 
of artificial ivories. 

‘ ‘ I must be off, ’ ’ she added, ‘ ‘ I dine at the 
Spruce-Pines to-night. Isn’t it heartrending 
how that man treats his angel of a wife ? How 
she bears up under it, I don’t see, and yet she is 
always cheerful. They say that other woman 
has a Persian lamb coat this winter that is an ex- 
act copy of hers. ’ ’ 

Miss Logan went away, but young Pemberton 
remained. 

“So sorry not to have seen Yorke,” he re- 


The Lady and Her Tree. 43 

sumed as soon as an opportunity presented itself 
of getting near Mrs. Yorke again. “I dropped 
in at the office to-day to ask him about the foot 
ball game on Saturday, but he was out. How 
long does he expect to be in New York ? ” 

“ I really don’t know. He sent home for his 
satchel, and just a line saying that business made 
it imperative that he go at once. ’ ’ 

The suspicion of a smile floated across young 
Pemberton’s features ; and Mrs. Yorke ob- 
served it. 

‘ ‘ Do you know what the business was ? ’ ’ she 
asked, unable to restrain the curiosity that the 
smile provoked. 

“ I ! ” he exclaimed, in apparent surprise, “ O , 
dear, no ! I know nothing whatever about the 
details of the office. It might have been one of a 
thousand things connected with the company’s 
affairs, and it might have been — but no , of course 
not !” 

‘ ‘ What do you mean ? ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ I was about to say that it might have been a 
private matter. ’ ’ Pemberton slowly extracted a 
newspaper from his hip pocket. ‘ ‘ Of course you 
never read the ‘Personals’ in the Herald ,” he 
said. 


44 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


“ Mr. Pemberton! ” 

“ I didn’t expect that you did. Therefore you 
couldn’t have seen this one,” and he pointed out 
an advertisement and handed her the paper. 

What Mrs. Yorke read was this : 

EKROY DNAL WEN.— Must see you to-day (Tues- 
day) sure. Let nothing stand in your way. Same place 
as before. NANA. 

‘ ‘ I am sure, ’ ’ she said, in a relieved voice, 
“ that I see nothing in that. What is it ? ” 

‘ ‘ The name. ’ ’ 

“The name,” she repeated looking at it again, 
“Why it’s Scandinavian — Norwegian or some- 
thing. It conveys nothing to me. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Read it backwards, ’ ’ suggested Pemberton ; 
and as her eyes bent upon the paper, an expres- 
sion that was Mephistopliielan swept over the 
young man’s lean, smooth-shaven face. 


CHAPTER IV 


MARIONETTES WITH BROKEN STRINGS 

M RS . YORKE made a change of toilet, hurriedly 
and with trembling fingers. In the presence 
of young Pemberton, wlip had been the last of her 
guests to leave, she had done some capital acting, 
and the effort had left her nervously unstrung. 
She had pretended to understand the personal and 
to invest it with but slight importance, and she 
had pretended so well that her visitor was almost 
deceived by her assumed nonchalance. But now 
that he was gone and there was no longer any 
need for masquerading, she gave evidence of how 
powerful was the blow that those few lines of type 
had dealt her. In the process of changing her 
gown, her thoughts being far away, she unhooked 
her corsets and sought under the pillow for a be- 
laced and beribboned robe de unit, before realizing 
that she was not about to retire. Eater on, she 
searched her bureau drawers for the tiny black 
lace and jet theatre bonnet that she invariably 
kept on the upper shelf of her wardrobe ; and, 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


46 


when she thought her robing completed, she dis- 
covered that she had failed to change her dainty 
bottmes de snide for her patent leather walking 
boots. 

Meanwhile the Herald personal had taken on a 
thousand different meanings. She had tried at 
first to fancy that it was a matter of business, 
merely, but the signature precluded any such con- 
clusion ; and she ended, and believed herself char- 
itable in so doing, in the belief that it was a com- 
munication from one of her husband’s ante-mar- 
ital affinities. A suspicion that he was faithless 
to her she refused to harbor, though suggestions 
of his frailty had in the last half hour presented 
themselves in many different shapes, and the 
advertisement, and his apparent haste to respond 
to it, in themselves bore testimony that, to even a 
less jealous person, would have been convincing. 
In spite of her leniency, which was due quite as 
much to her self-esteem as to her trust in her 
husband’s fidelity, she was disposed to retaliate, 
and when Tad Pemberton had proposed that, 
Yorke being away, she might, in order to avoid a 
dull evening at home, dine with him at the Belle- 
vue and go to the play later, she had gladly, not 
to say enthusiastically, consented. Then Tad 


The Lady and Her Tree. 47 

had hurried off home to get into his evening 
clothes, promising to be back at seven, and to 
order dinner on the way. 

It was ten minutes after the hour named when 
he presented himself at the door of the Yorke 
apartment, having left a hansom waiting at the 
street entrance. Mrs. Yorke, as she answered 
the tremulous summons of the electric bell, was 
working her small hands into a pair of new gloves. 

“I shall be ready in an instant,” she said. 

‘ ‘ Do you mind if I finish putting on these gloves 
in the elevator ? ’ ’ 

“Not if the elevator boy doesn’t,” he an- 
swered. 

Mrs. Yorke looked at him. There was some- 
thing about his speech that struck her as peculiar 
— a certain thickness of the tongue that sounded 
suspicious ; and she observed that his cheeks were 
a trifle flushed. 

“ The elevator boy is used to it,” she added, 
stepping into the hall and closing the door. 

“ I’m afraid I’m a little late,” Ted observed. 
‘ ‘ I ran across Montie Willington at the Bellevue, 
and- ” 

“I know,” interrupted Mrs. Yorke, laughing, 


‘ ‘ cocktails. ’ ’ 


4 8 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


“ By Jove! ” exclaimed the young man, pleased 
and surprised, ‘ ‘ how did you guess ? ’ ’ 

“ I have a husband,” she answered, smiling. 

“So you have,” returned Pemberton, disap- 
pointedly. “But ” he paused a second. 

‘ ‘ Let us forget it. ” 

‘ ‘ I should like to, ’ ’ .she said, ‘ ‘ sometimes — but 
unfortunately I can’t.” 

“I’ll help you,” ventured the youth ; and then 
the elevator came up, and they descended in si- 
lence, as if not daring to speak before the boy 
that turned the wheel. 

When they reached the hotel, Mr. Pemberton’s 
table was in readiness, adorned with a huge 
bunch of La France roses, and glowing under the 
light of a tiny yellow-shaded lamp. As they sat 
down the oysters were served. 

“ Only fancy ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Yorke, as she 
drew off the gloves that she had struggled into 
not ten minutes previous, ‘ ‘ not over a dozen 
tables occupied in the room — and this the most 
swagger restaurant in the city ! And yet I have 
actually heard people here venture to compare 
Philadelphia with New York, to New York s dis- 
advantage.” 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


49 


“ It is a city of homes,” ventured Pemberton, 
‘ ‘ not of restaurants. ’ ’ 

“It is not a city at all,” Mrs. Yorke replied, 
her annoyance at being deserted in it by her hus- 
band rising up and crushing her policy, ” it is a 
collection of brick houses and marionettes — mari- 
onettes with broken strings.” 

Young Pemberton laughed lightly, and, beck- 
oning a waiter, told him to serve the sherry. 

“ You are mistaken, I think, in one particular,” 
he said, at last. ‘ ‘ I have very grave doubts 
about the strings — I don’t think they ever ex- 
isted. ’ ’ 

“ O, yes,” she persisted ; “ they may even be 
intact yet. What is needed, I think, is a few 
New York people to pull them.” 

“And mine?” 

4 ‘ I fancy, ’ ’ she answered, smiling, ‘ ‘ that yours 
are already in excellent hands.” 

He wondered whether she, too, had heard of 
Dolly Foster, and at that moment discovered 
that Montie Willington and Mrs. Martineau were 
seated at an adjacent table. 

“ What do 3 r ou think! ” he called over to his 
friend, “Mrs. Yorke declares she has me on a 
string.” 


50 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


“ She’s stringin’ you,” called back Montie, in 
an admirable imitation of the patrolman in 
‘ ‘ Reilly and the Four Hundred. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Yorke bowed to Mrs. Martineau, and 
Pemberton explained that Martineau was in 
Washington on some political business, and that 
.Montie and Mrs. Martineau were going to join 
them in their box at the theatre. 

‘ ‘ What is the play ? ’ ’ she asked, more for want 
of something to say than out of interest. One 
play would serve as well as another she told her- 
self, to fill in the gap of the evening, and she 
questioned, even if the most eloquent masterpiece 
ever evolved would keep her thoughts away from 
that Herald personal. 

“ It’s a variety show,” explained Tad, a little 
doubtfully. “You’ve been to Tony Pastor’s in 
New York, haven’t you ? or to Koster & Bial’s ? ’ ’ 

“ O, yes ; once,” she answered, not in the least 
shocked, “ and when we are in London, we sim- 
ply live at the music halls. I am mad over that 
sort of thing. ’ ’ 

“We may see some marionettes,” added Pem- 
berton with a laugh. 

“I went to one of the roof gardens in New 
York last summer with Mr. Yorke,” his compan- 


The Lady and Her Tree . 51 

ion pursued, “and we heard the oddest song 
there, sung in the most deliciously chic way.” 

“What was it?” 

“ I don’t remember the title, but it was some- 
thing — well, every other line was : ‘And her 
golden hair was hanging down her back ! ’ It was 
awfully ridiculous, of course, but we were both 
charmed by the girl who sang it. I forget her 
name ; but she was simply lovely, and Mr. Yorke 
was actually fascinated by her.” 

Montie Willington was quite near enough to 
catch this bit of conversation, and he winked 
knowingly at Pemberton. 

“I’ve heard that woman, Mrs. Yorke,” he 
called with the express intention of annoying his 
friend, “ and she’s a teaser. Her name is Dolly 
Foster.” 

Mrs. Martineau, who had failed to overhear 
the conversation, looked across the table at Montie 
in surprise. 

“Sh!” she whispered. “Haven’t you any 
tact, whatever?” But young Mr. Willington 
only smiled. 

“ Now Pm stringin’ him,” he said. 

The champagne came on with the pheasant, 
and Mrs. Yorke surprised Pemberton by the way 


52 The Lady and Her Tree. 

she emptied her glass. Every drop .she drank 
seemed to infuse new life into her, and the worry 
and annoyance of the late afternoon grew gradu- 
ally” more dimly indistinct. The Herald personal 
seemed almost like a dream. It had certainly 
lost its power to unnerve her. She was now per- 
fectly self-possessed, and realized that her appe- 
tite was excellent and the company thoroughly 
congenial. The dinner was capital, and she con- 
gratulated Mr. Pemberton on his ability to order, 
little dreaming that he had left everything to 
Baptiste. 

The performance at the Auditorium, whither 
they went, was not inspiriting. As compared with 
Koster & Bial’s, or even the Madison Square roof 
garden, it seemed to Mrs. Yorke, in spite of her 
three glasses of champagne, preceded by a sip of 
sherry and a half pint of Ponte Canet, exceed- 
ingly dull. Mrs. Martineau, whose exile from 
New York had lasted longer, and whose libations, 
perhaps, had been more liberal, laughed and ap- 
plauded every feature, and finding her so well 
amused, Montie Willington turned his attention 
to Mrs. Yorke, who sat in front of him, frowning 
at young Pemberton, who was palpably drowsy. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


53 


“You haven’t mentioned Spring Garden street 
to anyone ? ” he whispered with a low laugh. 

Mrs. Yorke's frown gave way to a smile. 

“ No,” she answered. 

“ I knew you hadn’t boasted of it.” 

“Why?” 

‘ * I saw Mrs. Cad walader- Beech at your tea 
this afternoon. 

‘ • I don’ t understand ’ ’ 

“Haven’t you learned yet? Why they say 
that woman won’t have even a servant in her 
house that ever lived north of Market street. ’ ’ 

“ I shall tell her my origin the next time I see 
her,” Mrs. Yorke declared. 

“Don’t — for her sake,” pleaded Willingtbn, 

‘ ‘ the shock might prove fatal — she has accepted 
tea at your hands. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Suppose she should find me out ? ’ ’ 

“ In that case it would be tit for tat.” 

“Tit for tat?” 

* ‘ Yes. You would in turn find her out — when 
you called. ’ ’ 

With this style of badinage they made away 
with an hour, while Pemberton nodded and Mrs. 
Martineau shrieked over the somewhat coarse 
jokes of the comedians and applauded the rather 


54 The Lady and Her Tree . 

tinny singing of the soubrettes. The wine had 
colored her face, and if she blushed, the blush 
was invisible. 

After the concluding farce the men suggested 
supper, but Mrs. Yorke declined. She pleaded 
fatigue, and begged them to excuse her. Wil- 
lington agreed, on one condition : that she should 
make one of this same par tie carrie for a drive on 
his coach the next forenoon to the Country Club. 
To this she gave a willing assent ; and then, at 
her own suggestion, Pemberton dismissed the 
hansom that he had kept waiting, and, bidding 
the others good night, he and she walked to- 
gether to the Salisbury. She would have left 
him at the entrance, but he preferred, he said, to 
see her safely within her own door. She was not 
a little displeased at the sodden condition he had 
developed, and his dozing in the box had annoyed 
her. Doubting his ability to insert the latch-key 
she undertook to let herself in, unassisted, ex- 
plaining that the lock was peculiar. As she 
placed the key in the door, she thought she de- 
tected a sound of footsteps within, and started 
back in affright. 

“What is it?” Tad asked. 

She had grown suddenly pale, and her hand 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


55 


was trembling. In an instant, however, she re- 
covered her self-possession. 

“I must have been mistaken ,’ * she said, re- 
turning to the attack; ‘ ‘ no one could possibly ’ ’ 

She opened the door. Yorke was standing in 
the passageway. 

“ You ! ” she gasped, in surprise. “ I thought 


<l Yes,” he answered, coming forward, “I 
made short work of it. Hello, Pemberton ; how 
are you ? ’ ’ 

Tad took his proffered hand. 

“ Won’t you come in and have a pipe, or cigar, 
or something ? ’ ’ 

The young man hesitated. A glance at Mrs. 
Yorke decided him. 

“ No, thanks ! ” he said, “ I’ve got to meet a 
fellow at the Club.” 

u O, by the way called Yorke, as after say- 
ing good night, Tad was retreating toward the 
elevator, ‘ ‘ you may get those tickets, for Satur- 
day, if you will.” 

When he turned, his wife had disappeared into 
her boudoir, slamming the door after her. 


CHAPTER V 


A BREAK IN THE PARTY 


HE slamming of the door awakened Yorke to 



a sense of his wife’s displeasure ; and the 
awakening was a surprise. In vain he cudgeled 
his brain for an explanation. He had, it was 
true, been absent on the day that she most wished 
him with her, but he had explained that it was 
business that claimed him, and he had never 
before, so far as he could recollect, found Kather- 
ine unreasonable. He had regretted his neces- 
sary absence from the festivity of the afternoon 
as much as she possibly could have done, and he 
had hastened home at some little personal incon- 
venience, in order not to leave her alone over 
night in a house that was still strange to her. A 
momentary disappointment had been his when he 
discovered that she was not in ; but this was 
speedily succeeded by a sense of gratification in 
discovering that his enforced absence had been in 
some way compensated for. Pie was very fond 
of his wife, and being naturally unselfish, she was 


The Lady and Her Tree . 57 

always his first ; rather than, as is frequently 
the case even in the most ideal households, his 
second, consideration. 

He walked through the long, narrow passage- 
way to the drawing room at the further end, 
where he found evidences still remaining of the 
crush of the afternoon. Cups and their dregs of 
tea were still on the table, and here and there, on 
the floor, were crumbs of vanilla wafers. On a 
plate, were several untouched tiny caviar and 
lettuce sandwiches. But what especially attracted 
his attention and opened up for him an entirely 
new line of thought was a newspaper lying upon 
an inlaid tabourette. It was a current copy of 
the Herald , and staring at him from its outspread 
page was the first column, with its personals ; 
and one personal in particular, that stood out as 
if in larger type than all the rest. 

He left it lying as he had discovered it, and 
crossed the floor to the door of Mrs. Yorke’s 
boudoir, through which the throng of the after- 
noon had surged, but which now was closed behind 
the green brocade portiere hung to disguise its 
glaring white enamel paint. Yorke drew back 
the curtain and placing his hand upon the knob 
would have entered, but the lock was turned. 


58 The Lady and Her Tree. 

“Pink!” he called— it was a pet name with 
which he had endowed her — ‘ ‘ Pink ! Open the 
door!” 

For a moment there was no response. Then 
he heard the key turned quickly — nervously, in 
the lock ; and he himself turned the knob and 
entered. Mrs. Yorke’s street gown had been re- 
placed by a looser one of delicate blue with an 
edging of engine, and her hair was in a long 
pendant braid. She was standing before a dress- 
ing table with her back turned toward him. He 
approached her with a smile upon his face. He 
realized how she had misjudged him, and he was, 
in truth, more pleased with her jealousy than 
annoyed by it. 

“Pink,” he said, placing his hand upon her 
shoulder, while she must have seen his smiling 
face in the mirror into which she was gazing, 
“ Pink, you are angry ; aren’t you ? ” 

“No,” she answered. But her tone, meant 
that she was. 

“ What are you then ? ” he asked. 

“Nothing.” 

“Don’t be nothing,” imploringly. 

$he made no reply. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


59 


“ I know the trouble, dear,” he went on, “ I 
saw it in the other room. * * 

Still she was silent. 

“Iam sorry you have discovered it, ’ ’ he began 
again. 

“ I have no doubt of that,” she replied with 
biting sarcasm. “ It was not intended for me to 
see ; of that I am sure. ’ ’ 

“ No,” he added seriously, “ it was not meant 
for you to see ; but since you have seen it, and 
are evidently deceived by it, let me tell you that 
it was a business matter purely.” 

She laughed coldly, sneer ingly. 

“ I suppose so,” she returned; “ business men 
usually insert personals in the Herald , and spell 
names backward, and sign themselves ‘ Nana * 
when they wish to communicate with other busi- 
ness men, don’t they ? ” 

“The signature,” he hastened to correct, 

“ was a stupid blunder.” 

“ I should say it was,” she interrupted, laugh- 
ing derisively. 

Yorke, who was reasonably slow to anger, took 
umbrage at this. 

“ I say it was a blunder of the typesetter,” he 
explained, with a serious inflection and, having * 


6o 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


said it, his lips, as she might have discovered 
had she glanced once more into the mirror, were 
tight set. 

‘ ‘ And you expect me to believe that ? ’ ’ she 
replied, without looking up. 

‘ * I expect you to believe nothing that you do 
not wish to believe,” answered her husband, 
coldly. 

‘ ‘ It was a pleasant thing to have pointed out 
to one, wasn’t it? ” she asked, after a pause. 

Yorke, who had walked across to the drawing 
room door, was now, in turn, silent. 

“ It was pleasant to have that thrust in my 
face when I explained that business had called 
you to New York! ” 

Yorke stopped suddenly, and turned. 

‘ ‘ Who thrust it in your face ? ” he asked, with 
more anger in his voice than had yet been there. 

“ A friend of mine,” she answered, turning an 
exasperating smile full upon him. 

‘ ‘ And an enemy of mine. ’ ’ 

“O, no, not that. I think he is really very 
fond of you. I fancy he imagined it a good 
joke.” 

“It was Pemberton.” Yorke, decided, “the 
wretched little busy body ! ’ ’ 


The Lady and Her Tree. 61 

“ I did not say so.” 

“ It is not necessary for you to say so ; I know 
it. He left a copy upon my desk, marked — marked 
with a blot that was meant to deceive me. I did 
not suspect that it was intentional then, for I had 

already seen the advertisement; but now ” 

“ You had seen it? ” queried Mrs. Yorke. 

‘ ‘ I had seen it. ’ ’ 

“Of course you had. That doesn’t surprise 
me. People that carry on correspondence of that 

.sort, I suppose, are always on the lookout ” 

Before she had finished Yorke had, with a 
gesture of impatience, passed into the drawing 
room again, closing the door noisily after hitn. 

The interview had not tended to Mrs. Yorke’ s 
.reassurance. Her husband’s attempted expla- 
nation had been general and vague. He had 
failed to particularize even the character of the 
business that was referred to by the advertisement. 
When he had the opportunity to tell her who 
this misspelled Nana was, he had avoided doing 
so, and had ended, as she supposed he would end 
by showing anger, himself, and by endeavoring to 
make himself out the injured one of the twain. 

She was not sure that, in spite of her words, 
she did not really believe him, diaphanous as his 


62 The Lady arid Her Tree. 

explanation was, but she was in no mood to 
admit that this was the fact. No matter how 
much a woman may distrust man in the abstract 
she is slow to lose faith in the individual, espec- 
ially when the individual is the creature to whom 
she has given the confidence and love of her vir- 
gin youth. For a moment she wished that her 
husband would return to beseech once more 
her forgiveness, but she realized that she was not 
certain that even this would result in reconcili- 
ation . 

She threw off her dressing gown of blue and 
ermine and prepared for bed. From the drawing 
room there came no sound. She donned her 
belaced and beribboned night gown, but the 
silence was still unbroken. She passed into her 
bed chamber and closed the door, and when she 
was safely and snugly between the sheets, and 
the lights were extinguished, she fell to sobbing, 
as the climax of the nervous strain that she had 
been under. 

Suddenly she detected footsteps in the passage- 
way outside her bed room door, where the hall 
stand was situated. Then she heard the hall 
door open and close and knew that Newland 
had gone out. She listened again, and became 


The Lady and Her Tree. 63 

conscious of the ascent of the elevator, of its stop- 
page, and again of its descent. For awhile .she 
lay awake wondering, and still sobbing ; and 
then sleep shut out all sounds and all emotions. 

When she awoke the sun was streaming into 
the room through the dotted Swiss curtains. 
Yorke was standing in his shirt sleeves, at a chif- 
fonier between the windows, and as she looked at 
his tall, slender, sinewy figure, the back of his 
head with its carefully brushed glossy black hair, 
and the generally well-groomed appearance of his 
tout ensemble , she experienced an almost irre- 
sistible inclination to cry out — “I love you! I 
love you ! I love you ! ” 

Her pride, however, was paramount. She 
closed her eyes, feigned sleep, and lay quite 
motionless until she heard him pass into the hall. 
Then the clock on the mantel shelf tinkled nine, 
and she knew that he was hurrying off to the 
office without so much as a bite of breakfast. 

There was something pathetic, she thought, in 
this energy of his. Only a few months before he 
had been an idler, free to go and come in his 
own time ; but now it was all changed. There 
was work for each day, and there were hours that 
must be punctually heeded. She realized that he 


64 The Lady arid Her Tree. 

was working for her, too, and began to question 
herself again as to whether his visit to New York 
could really have been, as he vowed, in the in- 
terest of this business, that now absorbed most 
of his time and thought. If it was, she blamed 
him for not taking her more fully into his con- 
fidence and explaining the situation to her, for- 
getting that she had repelled, rather than invited, 
anything of the kind. 

After breakfast she began to regret that she 
had promised to go to the Country Club. She 
would have much preferred stopping at home. 
She even thought of going to the office, just to 
see New, and let him know that after all she was 
willing to trust him. Once she sat down to write 
a regret to Mr. Willington ; but the day was so 
fine, and — there was the newspaper lying on her 
desk. She picked it up and re-read the adver- 
ment. Then she closed the desk, and began to 
dress for the outing. 

“ Same place as before. Nanay There was 
certainly nothing businesslike, she told herself, 
in that wording. It smacked of assignations of 
which she had read in French novels ; and then 
the details of these meetings came back to her, 
and her cheeks flushed, and she forgot that she 


The Lady and Her Tree. 65 

loved her husband at all ; forgot the pathos that 
had started tears to her eyes a few hours before, 
and hurried into her tailor-made gown, fearful 
that she might be late at the Stratford, from the 
door of which the coach was to start. 

When she arrived there, the vehicle, all glisten- 
ing blue and yellow, with its shining brass trim- 
mings, and its four sleek horses, with a smart 
liveried groom standing at the heads of the lead- 
ers, was drawn up in front of the entrance. 
Montie, in a long, light-colored coaching coat 
and a cream-tinted furry top hat, was standing on 
the sidewalk, putting on his driving gloves. 

“ I was so afraid you weren’t coming,’" he said, 
with a smile of welcome, ‘ ‘ I didn’ t know whether 
Tad’s absence would make any difference or not.” 

“Mr. Pemberton won’t be here!” exclaimed 
Mrs. Yorke in surprise. 

“ O, dear no,” returned Montie, laughing a 
little cruelly, “ he’s not fit. You never saw such 
a face on a man in your life. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Yorke’ s expression bespoke her utter 
ignorance. 

“ You haven’t heard about it, then ? ” Willing- 
. ton went on. 

“ Not a word.” 


66 The Lady and Her Tree. 

“ Well, under the circumstances perhaps I had 
better not say anything. ’ ’ 

“ O, but you must! ’ ’ An intuitive fear taking 
possession of her. 

“ But, I’d rather not.” 

“ Then I shall not go with you.” 

Montie looked perplexed. 

“Since you put it that way,” he said, after a 
pause, ‘ ‘ there is of course no alternative, but 
really, Mrs. Yorke, if your husband didn’t tell 
you, I feel that I shouldn’t.” 

“ My husband! ” she exclaimed, her fear be- 
coming a conviction, “ What had he to do with 
it!” 

“Everything,” answered the young man, 
laconically. 

“ You don’t mean that he and Mr. Pemberton 
fought?” she blurted out, with a strong accent 
on the last word. 

“Not exactly,” answered Montie smiling, 
“ Pemberton doesn’t seem to have been in it. But 
your husband’s fist became very well acquainted 
with Tad’s features. In fact it was presented to 
them several times, and it seems to have made a 
deep and lasting impression upon them.” 

‘ ‘ How perfectly awful ! ’ ’ 


The Lady and Hey Tree. 


67 


‘ ‘ Poor Tad ! ’ ’ 

“ Of course you will have to excuse me/’ she 
said after a moment’s hesitation, “ under the cir- 
cumstances I couldn’t think of going.” 

Young Willington endeavored to remonstrate. 

“ No one knows about it,” he said. ” Besides, 
you can’t shut yourself up on that account. ’* 

‘‘I couldn’t think of going,” she repeated, 
“it’s very kind of you to insist, but I really could 
not.” 

Then she bade him good bye, and, crossing 
Broad street, retraced her steps down Walnut. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE FORCING OF AN AFOLOGY 

A T the next corner, Mrs. Yorke passed the old- 
fashioned, red brick house of the Pliiladel- 
d'elphia Club, from the windows of which two or 
three elderly habitues, with faces only a shade 
lighter than the bricks, favored her with a stare 
of impudent admiration. Twelve or thirteen 
hours previous, her husband had stood upon the 
broad, low, white marble step of the same club 
house, had entered its wide portal, and had en- 
quired of the doorman if Mr. Pemberton, junior, 
w T as in the building. On receiving an affirmative 
answer, he had begged that the information be 
conveyed to him that a gentleman anxiously 
awaited him at McGowan’s — an all-night bar, not 
more than a stone’s throw from the more fashion- 
able Bellevue, but, for men of this ilk, a great deal 
more retired. It was in McGowan’s bar that the 
affray between Yorke and young Pemberton, 
which Mr. Willington had so briefly, yet graph- 
ically described, took place, and it was from 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


69 


McGowan’s bar, after the affray was over, that 
young Pemberton hastened to the refuge of the 
rooms on South Fifteenth street, for which he 
paid rental. 

Miss Dolly Foster, reclining in a comfortably- 
upholstered arm chair, with her dainty feet sup- 
ported by an ottoman, was puffing a cigarette, 
and reading a New York dramatic paper between 
puffs. O11 the table beside her were a lamp, a glass, 
and a half emptied bottle of beer. At sight of 
Tad, her feet came down, the cigarette dropped 
from her lips, and the paper fell to the floor. 

“You’re a sight !” she exclaimed, staring at 
his battered countenance. “What on earth has 
happened to you ? ’ ’ 

“ Trolley osis ! ” answered Tad, determined not 
to tell that he was worsted in a fistic encounter; 
“ a collision and I was thrown down.” 

Dolly lowered her head a trifle and looked at 
him through her right eyebrow, an expression of 
incredulity playing about her lips. 

“Rats!” she said, quietly, “you’ve been 
hammered.” 

‘ ‘ I tell you, ’ ’ repeated Tad, ‘ ‘ I was in a trolley 
car that collided with another car, and I w T as 
thrown down and dragged.” 


1 


70 The Lady and Her Tree . 

“ How were you dragged, if you were in the 
car ? ’ ’ 

“ I mean I was on the platform.” 

“ Better say you were just getting on.” 

“ So I was.” 

“ No you weren’t ! You weren’t near a trolleys 
car. You were in a fight, and the other fellow 
was too good for you. He must have landed six 
or seven times on your face.” 

“ O, well,” exclaimed the victim impatiently, 
“since you won’t believe me, have it y^our own 
way ; only, for God’s sake, get some .stuff out, 
and try to do something for these cuts and 
bruises/’ 

There was no ‘ ‘ stuff ’ ’ to get out, Dolly said, so 
she rang for a . messenger, and sent him after 
court plaster, and witch hazel, and a half dozen 
raw oysters, having heard that raw oysters, 
bound over a bruised eye, would prevent discol- 
oration. 

“ Who did it?” she asked, when the boy had 
been dispatched. 

Tad made no answer. He threw himself dowm 
on a couch, and wiped away the blood that oozed 
from a cut in his lip. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 71 

“You ought to take boxing lessons,” Dolly 
suggested. 

“Damn it!” shouted Pemberton, irritably. 
“Shut up ! He was a bigger man than I am, 
and ” 

The rest of the sentence was drowned in Dolly’s 
laughter. 

“ I knew it,” she cried, delightedly, “ I knew 
it. What is the use of trying to deceive me? 
What was it all about? ” 

The young man was silent. 

“You were both drunk, I suppose? ” she sug- 
gested. 

“No,” he replied, “we were neither of us 
drunk.” 

“What was it, then?” 

Pemberton was angry with her* for her persist- 
ence. 

“ If you must know,” he said, “ we both love 
the same woman.” 

Her vanity blinded her to the import of his 
words. 

“ It was about me, theu,” she concluded, some- 
what gay ly . ‘ ‘ Who was he ? It wasn’ t ’ ’ 

“No, no, no,” interrupted Tad, who failed 


72 The Lady and Her Tree . 

to appreciate the gayety of her tone, “ it wasn’t 
anybody that you know.” 

“An unknown mash?” she laughed. "Well, 
why need you have quarrelled with him ? Aren’t 
you satisfied with my preference for you ? ’ ’ 

Tad rolled over in disgust, his face to the wall. 

“ Where the devil is that boy ? ” he ciied, af- 
ter a pause. “ My face is swelling terribly, and 
my eye will be as black as my hat.” 

Tor two days the young man kept to these 
rooms, and when at last he went out, he was still 
considerably disfigured. At the Rittenhouse 
Club he found a letter two days old, from Mrs. 
Yorke, in which she said that she was more sorry 
than she could tell to hear of what had happened. 
She hoped that he would relieve her of all blame 
in the matter. She had not told Mr. Yorke a 
word. He had guessed it, himself. And she 
added as a postscript : “I am so angry that I 
have scarce’ y spoken a word to him since.” 
Young Pemberton rubbed his hands with delight. 
He did not regret his injuries now in the least. 
Everything seemed to be working his way. He 
had feared all along that Mrs. Yorke had insti- 
gated the attack upon him ; but now he discov- 
ered that he had her sympathy, and “ sympathy ’ ’ 


The Lady and Her Tree. 73 

— he concluded, “well, everybody knows what 
that is akin to. ’ ’ 

As he was about to pass out of the club house 
he saw Yorke’ s name posted on the list of pro- 
posed members, and smiled as he thought 
how, when the vote on that name should be 
taken, there would be at least one black ball to be 
tallied — a black ball from which Yorke could have 
no appeal. I11 that way he would have a part of 
his revenge. The sweetest part would come 
later. He was fully determined upon that ; and, 
in order to obtain it, it would be necessary for 
him to seemingly do Yorke a favor, for he could 
not secure the Assembly book for the wife and 
not the husband. Already he had placed Mrs. 
Yorke under a certain obligation in showing her 
that her husband was unworthy, as he believed, 
of her devotion ; and that she valued this, 
was made evident by the note that he had just 
received. When he should obtain for her the 
coveted bid to the Assemblies, her cup of obliga- 
tion, he fancied, would be full ; and this, combine4 
with a desire to revenge herself upon Yorke, 
ought, he thought, to make his conquest com- 
paratively easy. With these plans running riot 


74 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


in his brain, he boarded a Chestnut street car, and 
rode down to the office of the company. 

He was anxious to know what course Yorke 
would take when he came face to face with him 
again, and he thought it wise that their first 
meeting after the episode at McGowan’s should 
be, if possible, where no social scandal could arise 
from it. He remembered that he had promised to 
secure tickets for Yorke for the foot ball game at 
Manheim on the coming Saturday, which was 
one of the society events of the autumn; but, 
under the circumstances, he had, of course, no 
intention of furnishing them. The three for 
which he had asked, in advance, had been sent to 
him, but he proposed to allow Yorke to squander 
his money with the speculators, rather than do 
him this favor. One of the seats he meant to 
exchange for something less desirable in another 
part of the stand, and to give it to Dolty, who 
had expressed a desire to go ; and then to invite 
Mrs. Martineau, or some other congenial .spirit to 
share with him the remaining two. 

As he entered the office, he met his father at 
the door. Mr. Pemberton, senior, was going out. 

At sight of his son, his features assumed a 


scowl. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 75 

“Thaddeus,” exclaimed the old gentleman, 
with well-feigned surprise, “What in heaven’s 
name is the matter with your face ? ’ ’ 

Thaddeus fell back on his original story. 

“ I met with ^ an accident on one of the new 
trolley cars,” he said. 

Mr. Pemberton coughed once or twice to dis- 
guise his annoyance at this bare-faced lie ; for the 
story of the affair had already reached his ears, 
and had been explained by Yorke, to his entire 
.satisfaction. He had sided with the company’s 
vice-president in the matter, against his son, and 
the attempt of the youth to deceive him embittered 
him all the more. 

“ You did nothing of the sort,” he replied, 
sternly; “you interfered in a gentleman’s pri- 
vate business, and he, rightly and justly, thrashed 
you for it. Why can’t you tell the truth ? ” 

Tad was, for a moment, nonplussed. 

‘ ‘ Since the gentleman has seen fit to tell of the 
affair,” he said, at last, “there is no longer any 
need for me to disguise it. I did not feel at 

liberty to make public the ” He hesitated a 

moment before completing the sentence — ‘ ‘ the 
scandal,” he added. 


76 The Lady and Her Tree . 

“Scandal!” exclaimed Pemberton, senior, “is 
not the word. ’ ’ 

“ Excuse me,” replied his son, “but I dis- 
agree with you.” 

“Mr. Yorke,” continued the other, “ went to 
New York to meet a gentleman regarding a mat- 
ter of vital importance. He was particularly anx- 
ious that Mrs-. Yorke should know nothing of the 
affair. Even had it been a woman that he went 
to see, as you supposed, it was a most ungentle- 
manly act on your part to expose him to his 
wife. Mr. Yorke explained the situation to me, 
after I heard a garbled story of the encounter 
from a witness who did not understand the mer- 
its of the case. What I wish you to do, now, is 
to go to Mr. Yorke and apologize.” 

“ I refuse,” returned Tad, bluntly. “ I think 
the apology should come from him.” 

“ I command you to go! ” shouted his father, 
his face crimson. 

“And I decline,” replied the young man, 
coolty. 

The color in the cheeks of Pemberton, p'Zre, 
faded to an ashen white. His hands twitched 
nervously, and his lips were drawn so tightly that 
only a streak, like a scar, marked his mouth. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


77 


“ Step into this room with me, a moment ;” he 
ordered, in a voice that Tad did not dare disobey. 
Once in his private office, he motioned the young 
man to be seated, and he, himself, took a chair 
near him. He was still pale, and, when he spoke, 
his voice trembled. 

“ I had no intention of telling you,” he began, 
seriously, “ but you have forced it from me. 
This company, as well as others, has been feeling 
the stress of the financial depression. We are in 
an exceedingly tight place. This affair of yours 
has angered Yorke — and I do not blame him for 
being angered — and he threatens to draw out of 
the concern. If he should force his stock upon 
the market now, an investigation into our affairs 
would result, and an investigation would expose 
our weakness. For me — for you — it would mean 
financial ruin. Yorke’ s personal credit is excel- 
lent. He has been of great service to us, in get- 
ting money when we most needed it. We cannot 
afford to lose him. Do you understand? We 
cannot afford to lose him, and you must apolo- 
gize.” 

Tad looked at the carpet. The pill was a very 
bitter one for him to swallow. He searched the 
corners of his brain for some means of escape, but 


78 The Lady and Her Tree . 

there was none there, to offer itself. He looked 
out of the window, across the brick pile of the 
old State House, and wished that he dare declare 
his individual independence ; but he realized that 
it would be too costly. 

“ Come! ” urged his father, “I tell you, you 
must. ’ ’ 

“All right! ” he said, at last. “ Since that is 
the situation, I suppose I must ; but — I’d rather 
lose my tongue than utter — — ’ ’ 

“Tush!” interrupted the old gentleman, 
“ Don’t be a fool! ” 

In the pocket of his coat young Pemberton 
found the three tickets for the football game. He 
took out two, and with them in his hand, he 
walked across the middle room to Yorke’s private 
office, and entered. Yorke glanced up in sur- 
prise. The visit was certainly the last thing that 
he had expected. He had counted upon the 
young man’s enmity, and he could not fathom 
the reason for this call. 

‘ ‘ I am very sorry for that affair the other day, 
Yorke,” Tad blurted out, stammering a little, 
‘ ‘ and I apologize. Here are the tickets I prom- 
ised you. ’ ’ 

For the words Yorke was of course thorougly 


The Lady and Her Tree. 79 

unprepared ; but he was quick of thought, and 
equally quick of action. He arose from his chair 
and extended his hand. 

“Very well,” he said, calmly, “we’ll let by- 
gones be by-gones. But ” he paused for a 

second, and then continued, “as for the tickets, 
I’m afraid I can’t take them ; I don’t know that 
I shall be able to go. What I should much pre- 
fer, in view of everything — — ” and he gave par- 
ticular stress to this last phrase — “ is that you, 
yourself, take Mrs. Yorke. I’ll try to find you 
during the afternoon, and may possibly accept 
your seat for a little while, if you’ll give it up 
to me.” 

The surprise was now Tad’s, but he was not a 
thick-witted youth, and he saw in an instant the 
object of all this. Society would soon be talking 
— for aught he knew it might already be talking — 
of the fisticuffs at McGowan’s, and evolving the- 
ories of its own as to the cause. The most natural 
theory, he realized, must involve Mrs. Yorke. 
He and she had dined together at the Bellevue 
during Yorke’ s absence ; she had gone to the 
theatre with him ; he had gone home with her 
afterwards ; and then, later, on the same night, 
Yorke had pounded his face to something very 


8o 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


like a pulp. From all this, he saw, there was 
but one natural conclusion to be drawn, and he 
quite understood Yorke’s desire to refute it. 
Should all three be seen together at Manlieim, 
the story would fall very flat. From his pocket 
he drew forth the third ticket. 

“ I have another ticket, here,” he said; “ the 
seats are all together. If you like I’ll use that.” 

“ It would please me better,” added the other, 
“if you would take Mrs. Yorke, and let me use 
the third ticket.” 

“As you like,” replied Tad; “I shall only be 
too glad.” 

And then he went out, feeling- not nearly so 
sure of his conquest as he had felt a half hour 
before. 


CHAPTER VII 


AS A MUTUAL FRIKND 

J_j AVING learned the method adopted by her 
husband to indicate his disapproval of young 
Pemberton’s interference in his domestic affairs, 
Mrs. Yorke had at once began to indicate her dis- 
approval of that method. Her note to the young 
man, which she took particular care that Yorke 
should see, was a part of the indication. Yorke 
had, very naturally, objected to her sending it, 
and in disregarding his wishes she had found a 
certain measure of satisfaction. She had upbraided 
him not a little for his aggressive action, and had 
pointed out to him, with some force of argument, 
that he had merely succeeded in putting her in a 
very false and embarrassing position. It was she 
that had suggested how society would view the 
affair, and she had exaggerated, rather than en- 
deavored to hide, her sense of mortification at the 
light into which she declared he had forced her. 

This first interview on the subject over, she 
relapsed into a studied silence that, to Yorke, 


82 The Lady and Her Tree . 

soon grew almost unbearable. Half the time she 
made no answer to his questions, and his 
remarks invariably failed to elicit any reply. In 
justice to her it may be said that she was more 
pained by the whole affair than she could tell. 
She argued that if the object of her husband’s 
visit to New York was simply a matter of busi- 
ness, there was no reason for him to have grown 
so angry over the fact that Tad Pemberton had 
shown her the advertisement that invited it. The 
more she thought on the subject, the more was she 
convinced that she had excellent cause for jeal- 
ousy ; and for half a day she seriously con- 
templated leaving Newland Yorke forever, and 
going back to her mother and step-father. She 
realized, however, that Mr. Van Vrancken had 
about all he could do to make both ends meet as 
it was, and, moreover, she dreaded the scandal 
that such a course would precipitate. Like many 
a woman before her she preferred to suffer her 
present mortification in silence, rather than in- 
crease it by summoning the world for an audience. 
A wound is not healed by baring it for pub- 
lic inspection. On the contrary, such a course 
encourages septic deposits, and the danger of ser- 
ious consequences is increased many fold. 


The Lady a?id Her Tree. 83 

Mrs. Yorke threw herself into the social vortex 
and made an effort to find forgetfulness in the 
rush and eddy of constantly recurring luncheons, 
teas and dinners. In a vain attempt to still the 
wagging tongues of the unconscionable gossips, 
Yorke frequently accompanied his wife, but ex- 
perienced very little real enjoyment in it all. 
Katharine was as distant from him, it appeared, as 
the north pole, and about as frigid. As he sat 
opposite to her at dinner and watched her chat- 
ting animatedly with the man beside her, he some 
times wondered whether she was really his wife, 
and made efforts to recall the days, not a week 
gone, when she was as merry and cheerful with 
him as she was now with this almost utter 
stranger. But those days seemed a very long 
distance off, and he questioned whether they 
would ever come again. Sometimes he grew 
angry, protested that she was silly and un- 
reasonable, and threatened that as he had ‘ ‘ the 
name ” he might as well have “the game,” but 
she only smiled sarcastically, and shrugged her 
shoulders, as to say : “ It is of no possible inter- 

est to me what you do ! ” Then he would go out 
disheartened, and seek congenial companionship 
at one of the clubs to gain entrance to which re- 


84 The Lady and Her Tree . 

quired less time and red tape than to the Ritten- 
house. 

Meanwhile, in addition to this trouble at home, 
Yorke was experiencing no little annoyance in 
not having been able to carry on a mission that he 
had undertaken at the request of the person who 
had called him to New York by means of that 
unfortunate personal. The time allowed was now 
growing very short, and he had thus far been un- 
able to discover the whereabouts in Philadelphia of 
the woman whom it was imperative he should see, 
and see quickly. He had, it is true, for obvious 
reasons, been loath to make enquiries where in- 
formation could have readily been obtained, but 
even had he been sure of securing it in that quarter 
the address he desired, it is questionable whether 
he would have asked it. He was certainly not in 
a position to seek of Tad Pemberton any favor ; and 
especially was he handicapped when it came to 
make a request of him in confidence. At the 
football game, however, fortune — in this respect, 
at least — smiled upon him. 

The day was, wet, chill and dismal ; but the 
crowd was inspiring and the display of bright col- 
ors in flags, ribbons, umbrellas, gowns, hats and 
flowers lent to the spectacle an artificial brightness 


The Lady and Her Tree. 85 

that glowed through all the rain and mist, and 
robbed the lowering gray clouds and the lurking 
mud puddles of more than half their depressing 
influences. 

The field of the Germantown Cricket Club at 
Manheim is a long, broad, and level one. O11 one 
side is the club hou.se, modeled after a colonial pat- 
tern and on the other, a permanent grand stand, 
with details, such as columns and medallion orna- 
mentation , of the same general style. On this occa- 
sion an additional temporary grand stand of mam- 
moth proportions had been erected in front of the 
club house, shutting it almost entirely from view, 
and at either end of the field were slanting plat- 
forms for those that chose to stand. 

When Yorke arrived play had already been be- 
gun, and every available space seemed to be 
thronged with enthusiastic humanity. His ticket 
called for admission to the covered permanent 
stand, but he turned aside for a moment to the 
sloping platform at the end of the enclosure, 
where he wedged his way into the crowd and 
craned his neck to get a glimpse of the players. 
A voice behind him, hoarse with shouting, 
yelled to him to put down his umbrella, and he 
smilingly obeyed, and for a while s'ood un- 


86 The Lady and Her Tree . 

shielded in the pelting rain watching the mud-be- 
grimed gladiators of Pennsylvania and Princeton 
striving, struggling, battling for the mastery, 
the one side straining every muscle and nerve to 
force the ball down the field, and the opposing 
side rising like a barricade of stone against its 
progress. 

At one moment the supporters of the red and 
blue of Pennsylvania broke into uproarious 
cheers, and the next thousands of orange and 
black flags were frantically waving for Princeton. 
Yorke was a Harvard man, and his sympathies in 
the present case were with the university of his 
adopted city. The play, he observed, was almost 
in the middle of the field, with little advantage to 
either side, and he considered it an excellent time 
to make his way, if possible, to his seat. He 
found the covered grand stand packed to the 
bubbling-over point, but he managed by dint of 
squeezing, pushing and wriggling, not unaccom 
panied by many polite requests and apologies, to 
reach the section in which his seat was situated. 
He tried, over the heads of the crowd below him, 
to count to the row upon which his wife and her 
escort were sitting, but some people were leaning 
forward and others were leaning back, and he 


The Lady and Her Tree. 87 

searched vainly to discover either Mrs. Yorke or 
Pemberton. 

In the effort he bent forward himself against 
the back of a woman on the last row, and disar- 
ranged her hat, for which, as she turned her face 
somewhat angrily toward him, he began to beg 
her pardon; but he stopped short in the middle of 
his speech. The face was in some respects a 
familiar one. He had seen it months before on 
the stage of the Madison Square Roof Garden, in 
New York. It had made an impression upon 
him then, by reason of its piquant beauty, and he 
had not forgotten it. It was moreover, the face 
of the woman for whom he had been searching 
for four days. 

“ I am really sorry,” he had begun, and then 
he had stopped suddenly. “But,” he re- 
sumed, “you’ll pardon me, won’t you? Isn’t 
this Miss Foster ? ’ ’ 

Dolly’s angry expression disappeared on the in- 
stant. Yorke was a handsome man. He was, 
moreover, a distinguished looking man. He pos- 
sessed that air, which, for want of something 
more definite, has been called aristocratic. 

“Yes,” Dolly answered, with a smile. She 
was angry with Tad that he had not taken her to 


88 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


the game himself, instead of allowing her to 
battle with the crowd that had nearly squeezed 
her to death while waiting for the special train at 
the Broad Street Station; and it seemed to her 
that an opportunity for a very sweet revenge was 
about to offer itself. 

“I thought I could not be mistaken,” added 
Yorke, “ I think we have a mutual friend— Mr. 
Alan Van Vrancken.” 

“Yes,” Dolly said again, her eyes evidencing 
her interest. ‘ ‘ He used to be a friend of mine, 
but I haven’t seen him for — — ” 

“He was asking after you a few days ago,” 
interrupted Yorke. “ I understood him to say he 
was not in possession of your present address.” 

“And I haven’t his, either,” returned Dolly. 
‘ ‘ Did he know I was in Philadelphia ? ’ J 

‘ ‘ He suspected it, and he told me that, should 
I meet you, I was to deliver a message to you from 
him.” 

“What was it?” she asked, her curiosity 
aroused. 

<f I can’t tell you here, very well,” Yorke tem- 
porized; “but if I might be permitted to call on 
you for — say for five minutes, I’d ” 

“Of course you may,” Miss Foster hastened to 


The Lady and Her Tree. 89 

reply. “ I am living there ” and she drew a 

card from her porie-rnonnaie and handed it to him. 

‘ ‘ May I come this evening ? ” he pursued. 
“I’ll not detain you long.” 

“As long as you like,” she answered, with a 
smile that revealed all the beauty of her match- 
less teeth. 

Yorke, as he raised his head from bending 
over her, glanced once more across the rows of 
people in front of him, and, as he did so, his gaze 
met that of Tad Pemberton, who seemed now, 
strangely enough, to stand conspicuously out from 
among the hundreds of men and women sur- 
rounding him. The gaze impressed Yorke as 
rather unfriendly, which did not surprise 'him, 
yet it caused him to speculate as to how long Tad 
had been watching him, and whether he had been 
a witness to the conversation. If he had, Yorke 
felt sure that Mrs. Yorke would hear of it before 
she returned to the Salisbury, if Tad could find 
opportunity to tell her. There was but one way 
to avoid this consummation, and that was not to 
let the opportunity present itself. 

With this object uppermost in his mind he be- 
gan pushing his way toward the vacant seat be- 
side his wife. Just as he reached it the air was 


9 o 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


rent by a mighty roar of triumph from the 
Princeton cohorts. Again their orange and black 
flags were frantically waved. Men were throw- 
ing their hats high into the air, and disre- 
garding where they fell. A youth with an orange 
and black muffler about his throat, stood up in 
his seat and shrieked : ‘ ‘ Five hundred to a hun- 

dred, that Pennsylvania won’t score!” Prince- 
ton had achieved a touch down, by a fluke, and 
her supporters were in a frenzy of delight. 


CHAPTER VIII 


AND AN EAVESDROPPER 

Y^OUNG Pemberton had observed Yorke when 
he raised his hat to the entrancing Dolly, 
and from that moment his eyes had not wandered. 
As he watched the exchange of smiles, the mov- 
ing lips, and the final pleased and satisfied bow 
and nod, he recollected what Mrs. Yorke had un- 
wittingly divulged over the dinner table at the 
Bellevue, a few nights before. He remembered 
her declaration that her husband had been fas- 
cinated by the girl who sang an inane song at 
the Madison Square Roof Garden. To that girl 
he had just seen Yorke talking, and the sight 
had aroused in him certain conflicting emotions. 
He had no notion of yielding Dolly to any rival 
suitor. He was exceedingly proud of having won 
the favor of a stage celebrity, as callow young 
men of his ilk are apt to be, and after having 
boasted in his club of his conquest and expended 
a good round sum to effect it, into the bargain, 
he was in no mood to retire gracefully in Yorke’ 5 


92 The Lady and Her Tree . 

favor. On the other hand, however, he was now 
engaged in a campaign which would, he felt sure, 
be materially furthered by a defeat in this very 
quarter. As he thought over the matter, it ap- 
peared to him that he might have to take his 
choice, but he feared that possibly, like the dog 
in the fable, on letting go the prize in possession 
for the greater one that tempted him, he would 
discover that he had snapped at the reflection and 
lost the reality. 

The ancestors of Mr. Thaddeus Pemberton 
were Quakers, and the young man had inherited 
a good deal of their shrewdness. He had no in- 
tention of paying any more dearly for the whistle 
which he now coveted, than was absolutely neces- 
cesary. After due consideration he concluded 
that it would be policy for him to permit Yorke 
to try his wiles upon Dolly, making sure, mean- 
while, if possible, that Dolly should not yield. In 
that way he could increase Mrs. Yorke’ s jealousy 
and her desire to retaliate, and at thejsaine time 
defeat Yorke’s purpose. Pof woman’s virtue 
young Pemberton had a very poor opinion, and 
as for virtue in man, he did not believe that it 
existed. Not for a moment did he fancy that 
Yorke’s object in speaking to Dolly could be 


The Lady and Her Tree . 93 

other than his own in cultivating Mrs. Yorke, 
For him there was but one goal to be attained, in 
association with women ; and he prided himself 
that no football team on the gridiron field was more 
skilful in strategic achievement, than was he in 
this particular game in which he conceived all 
men to be his rivals. It was indeed a form of in- 
sanity with which he was afflicted — a monomania 
that is unfortunately by no means uncommon. 1 

Mrs. Yorke had invited him to dine at tlie 
Salisbury, but he had trumped up an excuse 
about promising to meet a Princeton man at din- 
ner at the University Club, and had gone instead 
to the little dark red brick house on South Fif- 
teenth street, and had ordered dinner sent around 
from the Bellevue. When he arrived there, Dolly 
had not returned. He took off the heavy fur- 
lined coat that he had worn to the game, and 
hung it upon the rack in the hall, which, he ob- 
served, for some unknown reason, Dolly had dec- 
orated in orange and black. The rooms seemed 
cold, so he rang the bell, and ordered a fire in 
the parlor grate ; and a mulatto girl of pleasing 
face and rather shapely form came in and built it. 

Pemberton watched her critically as, stooping, 
she piled the kindling, and placed upon it a block 


94 The Lady and Her Tree . 

or two of cannel coal. The curves of her figure 
pleased him, and her profile as it showed against 
the glare of the blaze that she started, reminded 
him of a picture that he had seen somewhere of 
the head of a dusky Cleopatra. When, her task fin- 
ished, she rose and was about to go out, he inter- 
rupted her, and slipped his arm about her waist. 

“ Sally,” he said, wooingly, “ I like you! ” 

The girl twisted herself free, with a good-nat 
ured laugh. 

“Go ’way, sah,” she chuckled, “ I’se mar- 
ried.” 

Another moment, and she had gone, closing 
the door after her. 

Tad walked to where a great lamp with crimson 
porcelain shade rested on a centre table, and 
striking a match, lighted it. He was smiling, 
somewhat cynically. 

“As if that made any difference ! ” he mused. 

He sat down in a heavy, richly upholstered 
Morris chair, and from the table he picked up a 
book. 

“ I wonder what she reads,” he queried. The 
volume was a square, thin one, bound in gray 
paper, without a word of title on its cover. It 
looked as if it might be theatre programmes, 


The Lady and Her Tree. 95 

roughly bound, and Tad suspected that such it 
was. When he turned the pages, however, he 
discovered his mistake. It was a book of quota- 
tions — and such quotations! — every line reeked 
with obscenity. It delighted him. He laughed 
aloud. Then his curiosity got the better of his 
present enjoyment, and he turned to the title 
page. He fancied that it was a book gotten up for 
private circulation by some lover of the erotic ; 
but it was nothing of the kind. It was a defence of 
Zola, published in Eondon, and bore upon its initial 
leaf this legend : ‘ ‘ Extracts, principally from the 
English classics, showing that the legal suppres- 
sion of M. Zola’s novels would legally involve the 
Bowdlerizing of some of the greatest works in 
English literature.” 

He began again to read the extracts. 

“I'm not very well up in the English clas- 
sics,” he told himself, “and so I might as well 
improve my mind. ’ ’ 

When he had read a dozen lines the door burst 
open, and Dolly Foster presented herself. She 
wore a light cloth, tailor-made gown, the skirt of 
which was mud-smirched a foot from the floor. 
The ostrich feathers on her large hat hung 


96 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


straight and limp. She shivered as she came in, 
and rushed across to the welcome fire. 

“You’re a nice sort of a man, ain’t you ? ” she 
said, with her back to him, holding up first one 
tiny foot and then the other to the genial glow of 
the blazing lumps of coal. 

‘ ‘ Go hang yourself ’ * 

“ What! ” she exclaimed. 

“I was reading aloud,” he answered, with- 
out lifting his head. “Shakespeare. This is a 
very nice book you have here. ’ ’ 

“ Oh! that! ” she said. 

“Yes, this,” he replied, in a tone of annoy- 
ance. ‘ ‘ Where did it come from ? Who gave it 
to you ? ’ ’ 

‘ ‘A friend of mine, ’ ’ she answered. 

“Your friends are my enemies,” rejoined Tad. 

‘ ‘ Who was it ? ” 

“ I shan’t tell you.” 

He threw the book across the room and it 
knocked a small green Dresden vase on the cab- 
inet into splinters. He rose, and going to her 
clutched her arm. 

“Don’t be ugly,” she said, with more of 
threatening than pleading in her tone. “ I won’t 
put up with it.” 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


97 


“Answer me,” he persisted, disregarding her 
request, “ I’m not to be trifled with. Who gave 
it to you ? ’ ’ 

“ I refuse to tell you,’’ she answered, defiantly. 
“ Ivet go my arm ; you hurt me.” 

Tad only clutched her the tighter. 

“ Tell me ! ’’ he hissed. 

She was squirming now under the grip he had 
upon her. 

“You are bruising me,’’ she cried angrily. 
‘ ‘ Stop it ! I shall be black and blue. ’ ’ 

* ‘ Tell me ! ” he repeated, without relaxing his 
hold. 

“ I don’t know ; it came without a card.’’ 

He pushed her from him, and she struck 
against a chair, and came near falling. 

“ O, how I hate you!’’ she shrieked, vehe- 
mently. 

Tad laughed. 

“ You think you have found my successor,’’ he 
said, still smiling. 

“ I don’t know what you mean,” she rejoined, 
sinking upon a sofa and pulling off her gloves. 

“O, I saw it all,” he pursued. “I saw the 
big dark man you were talking to.” 

Dolly was silent. 


98 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


“I know him,” he went on, “ and you evi- 
dently know him, too.” 

“ I never saw him until this afternoon,” she 
replied, taking the pin from her hat. 

Young Pemberton laughed again. 

“ I suppose,” he said, “ that you expect me to 
believe that ! Now look here! I want to be very 
plain with you. I’m not going to go share and 
share alike with anybody, do you understand ? 
I’m paying for these rooms, and I’m paying ” 

“Stop!” she cried, passionately. “You 
haven’t bought me ! I’m not your slave ! You 
don’t own me : and, by God, you never will.” 

Her vehemence took Tad somewhat aback. 
Perhaps he was going too far. He had never 
seen her quite so independent. She was verging 
on the rebellious. 

“ I don’t want you to pick up men in public 
places,” he said. 

Dolly made no response. 

“I don’t want you to accept presents from 
other fellows.” 

Still she was silent. 

“As for that fellow, this afternoon,” he went 
on, after a pause, “what do you think of him ? ” 

‘ ‘ He was a gentleman,” she answered, quickly, 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


99 


“which is saying a good deal more than I can 
say for you.” 

Tad ground his teeth in suppressed rage. 

‘ ‘ I dare say, ’ ’ he added ; “I suppose he flattered 
you.” 

Dolly did not reply. 

“Well,” he pursued, “it pleases me that he 
should admire my taste. Be nice to him. You 
can, if you like, invite him to call here, but — ” 
and he paused, “ I must be behind that screen 
when he comes, ’ ’ he concluded. 

Miss Foster laughed now, in turn. 

“Oh, must you?” she asked, in a way that 
young Pemberton did not altogether relish 
‘ ‘ How nice that will be ! ” 

There was a rap at the door, and Tad, going to 
open it, found a waiter from the Bellevue with 
the dinner he had ordered. The meal was not a 
gay one. From the soup to the coffee, neither of 
the two participants spoke a word, and when it 
was finished, and the table with its tray of empty 
dishes had been moved to one side, Mr. Pember- 
ton indicated that he was about to go. 

“Remember what I told you,” he said. 

‘ ‘ Should I ever discover him here without your 


ioo The Lady and Her Tree. 

having given me previous warning, I’m done 
with you. ’ ’ 

Scarcely had he finished the sentence when 
once more there was the sound of knuckles on 
the door. It was the mulatto girl this time. 

“A gem’ man to see Miss Dolly,” she said, 
“The same gem’man, he told me to say, what 
spoke to her dis yer af’ernoon.” 

“ Tell him,” hastened Dolly, in some perturba- 
tion, “that I am engaged ; and ask him to call 
some other ’ 9 

“Tell him nothing of the sort,” interrupted 
Tad, in his most commanding tone. ‘ ‘ Tell him 
to come up. Miss Dolly will see him.” 

The young woman was about to persist, but 
Sally had gone. 

Tad followed her into the hall and secured his 
overcoat and hat from the rack. 

“ He is not slow to press his advantage,” he 
observed, as he came back, “ I shall listen to 
your conversation, as I promised, from behind 
this screen.” 

He had just secreted himself, when Yorke en- 
tered. 


CHAPTER IX 


LETTERS OF IMPORTANCE 

the Monday following the football game, 
Mrs. Yorke’s morning mail, slipped through 
the slot in the door of her apartments, contained 
three communications of more than ordinary im- 
portance. As was her habit, she breakfasted late 
and alone, her husband having gone to his office 
two or three hours earlier. Her letters she car- 
ried with her to the breakfast room, and while 
she waited for her eggs and her coffee, she opened 
and read them. The contents of the first was 
gratifying. It was an invitation to Mrs. Brokaw’s 
Tuesday Dances, and in it she saw an official ac 
knowledgement that she had been admitted to the 
smart set of the town. The second partook of the 
nature of a revelation . It had been forwarded to 
her by her step-father in New York, unopened, 
and readdressed from Washington Square ; and in 
the original endorsement she saw her maiden 
name. The enclosure was closely written in an 
uncertain, faltering hand, as was the superscrip- 


102 The Lady and Her Tree. 

tion, and she was not a little surprised to discover 
that it was dated from Philadelphia, several days 
back. 

It began with “My dear niece, % Katherine,” 
and it was s 1 ’ jned “ Your affectionate aunt, Kath- 
erine Rourke.” 

“It has been with some difficulty,” it began 
‘ ‘ that I have discovered your whereabouts in 
New York. For a good many years — in fact, 
ever since your mother’s second marriage— I have 
lost trace of you, and this I regret very much. I 
remember you very well as one of the sweetest, 
chubbiest babies I ever saw, and I thought I de- 
tected in you then, a resemblance to the portrait 
of my revered father’s great aunt, after whom you 
and I were both named. There is a legend in the 
family, you know, that she jilted John Penn, a 
grandson of the founder. She was certainly a 
very beautiful woman. I am getting old now — 
very old — I hardly dare say how old I am ; and 
they whisper that I am growing childish, which I 
imagine is quite true. Well, then, my dear, one 
of my childish fancies is to see you again. I 
don’t suppose you will remember me at all, but I 
am your great aunt, and I loved your noble fath- 
er, my nephew, very dearly. If you can arrange 


The Lady and Her Tree . 103 

to come to Philadelphia and visit me for a week 
or so, it will be a charity. I can make you very 
comfortable. I have a housekeeper and excellent 
servants, and you shall have a great room all to 
yourself. I w T on’t ask you to sit with me more 
than an hour a day, and the rest of the time, I 
dare say, you can find plenty of amusement.” 

There was more of this, in the same vein, which 
Katherine hurried through, seeking for the place 
of residence of the writer. When, at last, she 
found the address, she was not quite sure as to 
the location. The street was not familiar to her, 
and so she called the colored waiter and enquired 
of him. 

“ Shackamaxon street,” he replied, “ yes’m — 
Shackamaxon street am up-town, ma’am — wery 
far up-town. What dey calls Fishtown, ma’am. ’ ’ 

She thanked him, and after a moment’s con- 
sideration asked him to call a coupe for her. 
The letter from her great aunt was a most pleas- 
ant surprise. Hitherto she had no idea that the 
city possessed any of her kin. The kindly old 
lady already seemed very near and dear to her, 
and she meant to lose no time in hunting her up, 
and renewing the acquaintance of her infancy. 

The writing upon the third and last of her batch 


104 Th e Lady and Her Tree . 

of letters looked very much like the first endeavor 
of a child. The characters were correctly formed, 
but with evidences of considerable effort. Tear- 
ing open the envelope she drew forth a sheet of 
rough paper, bearing a dozen lines in the same 
style of chirography. Rude as the writing was, 
however, the matter possessed for her a startling 
interest. What she read was this : 

“ Your husband is untrue to you. He visits a 
woman on South Fifteenth street. If you want 
proof, it is easily to be had. Go to Caldwell’s 
store this afternoon, and tell them that Mr. Yorke 
wishes them to send the diamond sun burst that 
he ordered to the Salisbury, so that he can see it, 
before it is delivered. When a lover gives he de- 
mands — and much more than he has given.” It 
was signed “A Friend.” 

Every word was a blow; and her brain reeled 
under the assault. She was seized with a sudden 
dizziness, accompanied by nausea. The carafe 
and the dish of fruit on the table seemed to be 
swinging around her. She was conscious of the 
negro waiter coming toward her, but he appeared 
to be a long way off, and very small, as objects 
that are seen through the large end of opera 
glasses. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 105 

‘ ‘ Hab some ice water, ma’ am, ’ ’ she heard some 
one saying, and mechanically she took the prof- 
fered glass and drank. 

Then the carafe and the fruit stopped swinging, 
and she saw the waiter standing beside her. 

“ It was a momentary faintness,” she observed, 
aloud. 

“ Yes’m,” returned he, fancying that the remark 
had been addressed to him. “ You was extraor- 
dinary pale, ma’am.” 

“ I don’t think I care for any breakfast, Jack- 
son,” she continued, after a pause. 

She rose, supporting herself by the table, and 
passed out to the elevator, with uncertain steps, 
her mind a prey to a thousand suspicions awak- 
ened by that miserable, ill- written, nameless note. 
When she reached her room she found the chain 
bermaid there, but she scarcely noticed her. She 
threw herself down upon a couch in her boudoir, 
and gazed with wide eyes at the ceiling. 

“After all, then,” she told herself, sadly, “it 
is true. I don’t think I ever really doubted him. 
I pretended that I did, and I couldn’t understand 
that business trip of his, but— O, I have always 
believed him, really, and I believed him this time, 
against any reason. But now — O, yes, this letter 


io6 The Lady and Her Tree . 

must be true. No one would dare suggest such 
a proof, unless the proof were there. I hoped he 
was different from other men. I believed he was 
different. He has always been so good to me, so 
patient with me, and to think that — no, he is not 
false. I won’t believe it. Anonymous letters 
are not worth considering. Everybody says that. 
I ought to tear it up, and forget about it — or, I 
ought to show it to him. Yes, that is it. I 
ought to show it to him, and tell him I don’t be- 
lieve a word of it. That would end all this mis- 
understanding between us, and make me happy 
again. Perhaps, after all, it is a blessing in dis- 
guise. It will bring back the old days. He will 
take me in his arms and kiss me, and tell me how 
foolish I was to doubt him, and explain all about 
why he went to New York, and who Nana is, 
and maybe he will be able to tell who wrote this ; 
and then I will beg him to do nothing rash again, 
as he did — Ah! yes! ” — a thought suddenly came 
to her — “it is from Mr. Pemberton. I am sure 
it is from Mr. Pemberton. He has disguised his 
hand. He wants to be revenged on New. But 
then, he must know that such a revenge would 
make me suffer, and he has always been very 


The Lady and Her Tree. 107 

nice to ine. And beside, he has apologized to 
New, and ” 

“There is a coupe at the door,” announced 
the chambermaid. 

Mrs. Yorke sprang up. She had quite for- 
gotten her great aunt. 

“ I’ll be down presently,” she said. 

As she prepared for her drive, she continued 
to turn the subject over in her mind, and when 
she went out, she decided that she was still too 
much harassed and perplexed to think of visiting 
Shackamaxon street and Mrs. Rourke. The day 
was gray, cold and raw, with a promise of more 
rain, but she directed the coachman to drive to 
the Park and to keep on driving until she told him 
to turn back. She lowered the windows of the 
carriage, and the cool air upon her burning 
cheeks was very grateful. Her reasoning had 
taken another turn. 

“ If it is from Mr. Pemberton,” she argued to 
herself, ‘ ‘ it must be an effort to prove that when 
he implied that that personal was not a business 
matter he was right and New was wrong. If 
that is so, I don’t wonder he is anxious to show 
that he was right.” 

The cab was bowling out Iyocust street over the 


io8 The Lady a?id Her Tree . 

asplialtum of that narrow thoroughfare, meeting 
all sorts and conditions of vehicles on the way. 

“What is the use of proing and conning ?_” 
she said to herself, at last. “ If I follow the in- 
structions of the letter and find that there is no 
foundation for the charge, I shall know it is a 
cruel hoax. If I follow them and find that he is 

buying j ewelry for some one else ’ ’ She leaned 

forward and thrust her head out of the window. 

“ Driver! ” she called, “drive to Ninth and 
and Chestnut streets.” 

In front of the jewelry shop there were several 
carriages already drawn up, and Mrs. Yorke had 
a couple of pavements to cross. On entering the 
establishment she found all the clerks engaged. 
She was very nervous, and to wait made her 
more so. She pretended to examine a trayful of 
diamond rings in one of the cases, and standing 
thus, with her head bent, the words of a young 
woman beside her attracted her attention. 

“You have the address, I suppose,” she heard 
her say, “ South Fifteenth street ; and you under- 
stand that the new one is to be sent there. The 
old one goes to Mr. Yorke, with the bill ” 

The girl’s voice was loud and penetrating; 
there was no mistaking a single syllable. Mrs. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 109 

Yorke looked up hastily, a comely, fair-haired 
young woman, rather showily dressed. There 
was something familiar about her face, but Kath- 
erine could not remember where she had seen it 
before. The glimpse of her, however, was but 
momentary, for, having given her instructions, she 
flashed out of the store. Mrs. Yorke was tremb- 
ling, from eyelid to ankle. Her knees smote each 
other ; and as she spoke her voice was uncertain. 

‘ ‘ Who was that ? ’ ’ she asked ; making her 
question as brief as possible. 

The clerk was proud of his knowledge of celeb- 
rities. 

“ You’ve seen her, I presume,” he said, without 
the faintest idea that he was speaking to the wife 
of the man the girl had just mentioned. “ She’s 
what they call a serio-comic singer — Dolly Foster. 
She sang here last winter, and last summer 
she was at one of the New York roof gardens. 
This winter she isn’t on the stage, I believe.” 

‘ ‘And her golden hair was hanging down her 
back,” repeated Mrs. Yorke, without knowing 
that she was voicing aloud the words that had 
suddenly come to her, with a realization of the 
woman’s personality. 

“Yes, yes,” laughed the clerk, “that is her 


no The Lady and Her Tree. 

favorite song, I believe ; the one that she made 
such a success with.” 

Katherine made no reply. She stood gazing 
across the counter at the bric-a-brac on the 
shelves behind it. 

‘ ‘ Is there anything I can show you ? ’ ’ asked 
the clerk. 

She did not hear him. She was stunned by 
the blow that this corroboration of the letter had 
dealt her. 

“ I knew he liked her,” .she was repeating to 
herself. “ I knew he liked her. I knew he 
admired her. ’ ’ 

“Would you care to look at some of this 
Sevres?” persisted the clerk, puzzled by the 
woman’s expression. 

Still she made no answer. 

“We have some very pretty vases up stairs,” 
he went on, “if you care to ” 

She turned suddenly, before he had finished 
speaking, and walked out of the store The 
driver of the coupe did not notice her as she made 
her exit, and after waiting two hours he returned 
to the stable. Katherine Yorke, meanwhile, was 
lying on the couch in her boudoir ; her eyes 
fixed on the ceiling. 


CHAPTER X 


A TARDY RRSODVE 

|T was Horse Show week in New York, and 
Yorke determined to take Katherine over 
for a few days. That he should go was a neces- 
sity, and he was not inclined to add any more 
fuel to the flame of kindled suspicion by going 
alone. On his way up Chestnut street, about 
three o’clock, he stopped in at the jeweler’s and 
procured the diamond ornament that had been 
left there by Dolly Foster in the morning. They 
had made a drawing of it, the salesman told him, 
and the copy could be executed without retaining 
the original any longer. With this tucked snugly 
away in his pocket he went home. He would 
hurry Katherine into a street gown, throw what- 
ever was necessary into a steamer trunk, and by 
the aid of a cab he felt sure that the four o’clock 
train could be made very comfortably. That 
would get them over in time for dinner with his 
wife’s people, and they would have a full evening 
at the Show. He was hopeful, too, that the trip 


1 1 2 The Lady and Her Tree. 

and the change of surroundings would tend to 
slacken the strained relations that had existed 
between Katherine and himself for the past six 
days. 

For the elevator he was compelled to wait, and 
being in a hurry, and therefore a little impatient, 
he spoke rather sharply to the elevator boy — for 
which the youth managed, before the day was 
ended, to secure ample revenge. On reaching 
his room Yorke discovered that his wife was ab- 
sent. He examined with some care the tablet, 
hanging by the dressing table in her boudoir, 
upon which she jotted down her social engage 
ments, and found that she had noted thereon, for 
that afternoon, no less than four teas. Hence, to 
expect her in before six or seven, he realized, was 
to expect the improbable ; and at that hour it 
would be folly to think of starting upon their 
journey. 

“Well,” he said, resignedly, “we shall have 
to wait until to-morrow, ’ ’ and changing his coat 
for a velvet lounging jacket, he lighted a cigar. 
Picking up one of the magazines he threw himself 
down upon a cushioned corner seat, luxurious 
with many bright-colored pillows, and began to 
read. 


The Lady and dJer Tree. 1 13 

% The article was no more exciting than the av- 
erage magazine article of the present day. It 
was, in fact, quite as somniferous as any of its class, 
and in a little while the book had dropped from 
relaxed fingers, the cigar had fallen to the floor, 
strewing ashes as it went, and Yorke was sleeping 
soundly. 

When he awoke dusk had fallen, and the room 
was in gloom. He had been dreaming, he re- 
membered — a horrible, uncanny dream, in which 
he saw Katherine, standing knee- deep in muddy, 
slimy water, with reeds all about her, her fair 
hair loosed, stained with the black soil of the 
river bottom, and tangled with water weeds. But 
the most dreadful part of it was that, though 
standing, her face was' ghastly white, and her 
blue eyes, wide open, wore the dull glaze of 
death. He sprang up and turned on the electric 
lights. The clock told him that it was a few 
minutes after five. He went through the other 
rooms, but Katherine had not returned. The 
dream had made a deep impression upon him. It 
was realism itself, and while he knew that the ar- 
ticle which he had begun, concerning the charac- 
ter of Ophelia, had been largely responsible for it, 


1 1 4 The Lady and Her Tree. 

lie could not completely free his mind from the f 
influence of the vision. 

If Katherine were home he might easily forget 
it. The living face would obliterate the dead 
dream face, but until he saw his wife again, he 
felt sure that he would be haunted by those pale, 
sad features, and especially by those staring, life- 
less eyes. From a decanter on a dainty little buf- 
fet in his snuggery he poured out some whiskey 
and drank it. He lighted a fresh cigar. He ex- 
amined his wife’s tablet again. The latest of the 
receptions, he saw, was from four to seven. It 
might be two hours yet before she returned. He 
picked up the magazine and tried to read, but the 
words had no meaning for him. He cast about 
for some means of killing time. A mirror into 
which he glanced told him that his hair would 
bear trimming. He descended to the barber shop. 
The barber was inclined to be loquacious, and 
he encouraged him, hoping for diversion. The 
hair cutter entered enthusiastically upon the story 
of the wife of one of his oldest customers having 
committed suicide. 

“Yes, I know all about it,” prevaricated 
Yorke, endeavoring to stop the gruesome tale. 

“ I’ve heard it from his own lips.” 


The Lady and Her Tree . 115 

* ‘ Then maybe you know the cause ? 1 * sug- 
gested the wielder of the shears. 

“No, I don’t,” answered Yorke, hoping thus 
to end the subject. 

“Well, Ido,” returned the other; “between 
ourselves, she was foolishly jealous of him. She 
suspected him without reason. A better man or 
more faithful husband never lived. Most of us 
have our little love affairs on the side, Mr. Yorke, 
but Mr. ” 

‘ ‘Just so, ’ ’ interrupted Yorke, nervously, ‘ ' He 
was all you say he was — not too short, Charley. 
I think that will do. Just give it a brush over, 
and I’ll be off. I’m in a hurry.” 

The tale of suicide had been bad enough, but 
the cause was the last straw. Ordinarily it would 
not have affected him ; but his dream had filled 
him with morbid fancies. On his way back to his 
rooms, he bought an evening paper at the news- 
stand, and in it he read the report of the coroner’s 
inquest. The woman, according to the testi- 
mony, had been unwarrantably suspicious. Her 
husband, conscious of his virtue, had refused to 
humor her by an explanation, and she had killed 
herself, leaving a note in which she said that he 


The Lady and Her Tret. 


ii6 

would now be free to marry the person he pre- 
ferred to her. 

Thereupon Yorke immediately resolved that he 
would tell Katherine the whole story of his New 
York trip, and explain his visit to Dolly Foster. 
It was foolish of him, he argued, to risk lasting 
unhappiness for himself through a sentimental 
desire to shield others. He had no fear that his 
wife would follow the example of the wife of 
whom he had just read. She was not, he told 
himself, of that sort, but the picture beheld while 
he slept had aroused all that was fanciful and im- 
aginative in his composition, and this dread of an 
intangible something, he knew not what, was the 
result. Now that his mind was made up to tell 
her everything, and do away with all misunder- 
standing, he was more anxious than ever for her 
return. He would meet her in the hallway and 
take her into his arms, and kiss her lips, through 
her veil ; and then he would insist that she should 
sit on his knee while he made his confession ; 
and, after that, she would kiss him, and tell him 
how sorry she was ever to have doubted him, and 
how unworthy she was £>f him, and what a dear, 
old, good husband he was, after all. And then, 
in the morning, they would go to New York and 


The Lady and Her Tree. 117 

have two or three enjoyable days at the Horse 
Show, where they would meet all their old friends, 
and they would be as fond and affectionate as the 
proverbial bride and bridegroom, and the people 
that knew them would point them out as a model 
example of what married life should be. 

Under the spur of these virtuous resolves 
Yorke’s spirits rose. He began to dress for din- 
ner, .and, as he got into his evening clothes, he 
whistled merrily, and his face took on a beatific 
expression that had been a stranger to it for 
weeks. As he finished tying his white bow, the 
clock tinkled seven, and he listened for the sound 
of the ascending elevator. He was sure that she 
would not be much longer, now. Presently his 
ear detected the murmur of the rising car. Then 
he heard the iron gate thrown back, and a second 
later he heard it close. He started into the hall, 
pushing his arms into the sleeves of his coat. 
And then — he stopped, disappointed. The door 
of the suite next to his had just shut with a slam. 

He walked through the rooms once more, and 
lighted all the lamps, all the gas jets, and all the 
candles. There should be an illumination in 
honor of this event, he said. If he had only 
thought of it before he would have had some 


n8 The Lady and Her Tree. 

flowers. It was too late now to get them. She 
might be in at any minute ; and messenger boys 
take such an endless time to go an errand. He 
sat down and turned the evening paper inside out, 
his ears astrain for the first indication of her com- 
ing. The ticking of the clock seemed magnified. 
It was as loud as the voice of a telegraph sounder. 
And how slowly it ticked ! He threw down the 
paper and watched the hands. But for the tick- 
ing he would have thought the clock had stopped. 
The minute hand seemed motionless. 

Half-past seven ; and Katherine had not re- 
turned. Yorke walked to the hall door and 
opened it. The people that occupied the oppo- 
site apartment, were just coming down from din 
ner — husband and wife, together, and they were 
laughing. Yorke envied the man. He heard 
the elevator come up again, and he waited for it ; 
but it passed the floor without stopping. He 
went back to his rooms, which, in spite of all the 
light, seemed dreary. He lifted one of the draw- 
ing room windows and looked out. It was raining. 
The lights in the big buildings to the northeast 
gleamed dimly through the steady downpour. 
The gas lamps in the street below flickered dimly 
through the wet glass of their encasement. Urn- 


The Lady and Her Tree. 1 1 9 

brellas moved in and out among the shadows, 
shielding pedestrians beneath them. A car went 
by with clanging bell. A cab drew up at the 
door, and some one got out ; but whether man or 
woman the striped awning, stretched across the 
sidewalk, prevented Yorke from seeing. 

“That must be she,” he said to himself, pull- 
ing down the window and going to where, through 
the long, narrow hall, he could see her shadow, 
should she come, against the ground-glass panel of 
the door. He waited for minutes ; but not even 
her shadow rewarded him. 

At eight o’clock he rang for a waiter and sent 
up his order for dinner. She would surely be 
home iu a minute or two, now, he concluded, and 
the dinner might as well be ready to be served 
when she came. Again he tried to read the 
paper, and again he failed. He put on his hat 
and went down to the ground floor ; where, for 
ten minutes, he walked back and forth through 
the great white-marble-floored lobby and entrance 
hall. People came in and people went out, but 
the one face that he looked for did not appear. 
He went to the street door, and stood out under 
the awning. He watched every approaching cab 
expectancy, only to meet repeated disappoint- 


120 The Lady and Her Tree. 

ment, as it passed without leaving the car 
tracks. 

At half-past eight he returned to his rooms, 
and on his way up enquired of the elevator boy 
to whom he had .spoken so sharply a few hours 
before, at what time Mrs. Yorke had gone out. 

“I don’t remember her, sir,” answered the 
lad. 

And when Yorke had alighted and the boy was 
on his way down again, the aggressive youth smiled 
a glad smile of satisfied revenge, and said to him- 
self : ‘ ‘ Did I see her ? Well, I guess. Didn’t 

I hand her grip out to her, when she got out of 
the car! But I wouldn’t tell him. He’s too 
fresh, he is.” 

Of the names and addresses of the women 
whose teas Yorke imagined his wife would have 
attended he now made a mental note, and without 
stopping to mention that he would not require 
the dinner he had ordered, he started out, clad in 
a mackintosh and slouch hat, to trace if possible 
his missing spouse. Under ordinary circum- 
stances he would have concluded that she had 
stopped at one or another of these houses for din- 
ner — possibly at the Pembertons’ — but such an 
idea now, in his somewhat warped condition, did 




The Lady and Her Tree . 121 

not present itself. He refused to wait while a 
cab was telephoned for, but walked through the 
rain to a neighboring livery stable and there 
secured a coupe. 

As chance would have it, it was the same coupe 
and the same driver that had waited for Mrs. 
Yorke for two hours that morning, and had re- 
turned without her, but the husband knew noth- 
ing of that, and neither the stableman nor the 
driver deemed it worth while to tell him. 

At the residence of Mrs. Cadwalader- Beech on 
West Spruce street, Yorke could learn nothing 
His wife had not, so far as remembered, been 
present. There was a great crush, and it was 
possible that she had been there but the butler 
did not recall her. Mrs. Cadwalader- Beech, her- 
self, was dining out, and Miss Beech was indis- 
posed. Miss Logan, who lived at Eighteenth 
and Fine streets, had received from four until six, 
but Mrs. Yorke, she regretted very much, had 
not called. 

“ Is there anything wrong ? ” she asked Yorke, 
as he stood in the hall, hat in hand ; “ I hope 
there is no ill news for her. You can rely upon 
me, you know. It would never go further ; and 
if I can be of any assistance ’ ’ and she wagged 


122 The Lady and Her Tree. 

her crown of false hair to say that it would be a 
pleasure. 

“ No,” returned Yorke, with a tact that under 
the circumstances was remarkable, “ no; nothing 
wrong. I am called away, that is all ; and I 
want to see Mrs. Yorke particularly, before I go.” 

‘ ‘ So sorry ! ’ ’ ambiguously commented Miss 
IyOgan, with evident disappointment. 

Yorke called at the Pembertons’ last. The 
idea that his wife might be dining there had just 
come to him, and he felt rather ashamed of him- 
self for his anxiety as he mounted the steps. The 
rain had turned into a flood. It w T as coming 
down in gushes ; and Rittenhouse Square, oppo- 
site, in spite of its many lamps, resembled a dark 
waste of woodland. 

“ Is Mrs. Pemberton in? ” asked Yorke, of the 
man in livery who answered the bell. 

“No sir,” he answered, “she’s gone to the 
theatre with Mr. Pemberton ; but Mr. Tliaddeus 
is at home, sir. ’ ’ 

“Ah! Well, never mind then. Mrs. Yorke 
didn’t dine here to night, did she? ” 

* ‘ No, sir. There were no guests, except the 
ladies who received with Mrs. Pemberton, this 
afternoon, sir.” 


The Lady a?id Her Tree. 123 

“Was Mrs. Yorke at the reception? ” 

“ No, sir ; I believe not, sir. Leastwise I 
heard Mrs. Pemberton say at dinner that she 
wondered whether Mrs. Yorke could be ill, sir.” 

Anxiety is the mother of most monstrous appa- 
ritions, and Yorke was now really alarmed. He 
left word that he would call on Mr. Pemberton 
after the play ; and ordered the driver to seek the 
nearest telegraph office. It had just occurred to 
him that Katherine might possibly have gone to 
her mother in New York, though it seemed odd 
that she should have taken such a step without 
giving him any previous intimation and without 
leaving any word for him. Having despatched 
his telegram, he drove back to the Salisbury to 
wait for an answer, and hoping against hope that 
he should find his wife there. But she had not 
returned. If he could obtain no tidings of her in 
New York, he must seek counsel with Mr. Pem- 
berton, who was the man he knew best in Phila- 
delphia, and determine upon some course of 
action. The situation certainly began to look 
very grave. 

Nor was there any relief when, shortly before 
midnight, a boy brought the reply to his message, 
couched in these words, and signed by his wife’s 


124 77^ Lady and Her Tree. 

step-father: “Katherine not here. Wire at 

once what is the matter. ’ ’ 

Yorke hastened to Pemberton with the fixed 
idea that his only course was to lay the mystery 
immediately before the police department ; but 
Mr. Pemberton did not agree with him. 

“ Impossible! ” he said, decisively, “ the whole 
affair would get into the newspapers, and you 
might have serious cause to regret your precipi- 
tancy. As yet, you know nothing. There are a 
thousand places to which your wife may have 
gone. It is possible that she stayed somewhere 
for dinner, and that on account of the rain she 
decided to stop all night. ’ ’ 

The husband did not think such an explana- 
tion probable. He feared that she had met with 
some accident. After a half hour’s argument, 
however, he agreed to wait until morning before 
going to the City Hall. If she did not return by 
ten o’clock at the latest, he would set the 
machinery of the municipal detective bureau at 
work to find her. Mr. Pemberton urged a pri- 
vate detective agency in preference, but Yorke 
was not to be moved. 

It was after two o’clock when he reached home, 
and on opening his door, his eye foil upon a 


The Lady and Her Tree. 125 

square envelope lying on the floor of the narrow 
hall. He picked it up eagerly. The address 
was in Katherine's familiar hand. 


CHAPTER XI 


OUT OF THF WORUD. 

O HACK AM AXON Street is rich in contrasts 
It is a wide thoroughfare, with broad, 
red-brick sidewalks, and a paved roadway, bi- 
sected by car tracks ; yet, here and there, gaunt 
trees stretch their arras over board fences from 
enclosed gardens, and the cackle of hens and the 
crowing of chanticleers mingle with the hoarse 
piping of tugboats on the river, not far away, and 
with the shrill scream of shifting engines in the 
freight yards. Modern mansions of brown stone, 
three stories in height, frown down upon little 
old-fashioned frame cottages, and great red-brick 
houses with lace curtains at the windows jut up 
against boiler-shops and board yards. It is a 
stubborn old street that has fought long and hard 
against the invasion of neoteric improvement; 
and is gradually getting the worst of the battle. 
In the past it harbored many well to-do people, 
with snug fortunes invested in sailing vessels — a 
sixteenth interest in this schooner, a thirty-second 


The Lady and Her Tree. 127 

interest in that brig, and a sixty-fourth in some 
barkentine that sailed to the antipodes. Some of 
these folks still dwell there, though the shipping 
interests have long since departed from the neigh- 
borhood, and their money has gone into real estate 
and the stock of street car lines. 

Michael Rourke, whose double brick house was 
not far from a boiler shop on one hand and a 
tree-canopied chicken yard on the other, had 
made a fortune, as fortunes went in those days, 
in the business of ship-brokerage. He had left it 
well-invested, and his widow in the twenty years 
since his death, had seen it double and treble in 
value. She still lived in the great brick house, 
with its old-fashioned furniture. She had no 
companions save her servants; which included 
now and then a trained nurse — for she suffered 
from chronic rheumatism that at intervals reduced 
her to almost utter helplessness. Though she 
had celebrated her eighty-first birthday, her fac- 
ulties were still acute. But for the rheumatism 
that crippled her, she was remarkably well pre- 
served. She had come into her second sight, and 
could read without the aid of glasses; and she 
read much. Her mind was wonderfully clear, 
and her youth and its happenings were to her so 


12 & 


The Lady a?id Her Tree . 

many pages of large, legible type. Her family 
and its history were a garden in which she loved 
to ramble, and to her nurses her conversation was 
as entertaining as a romance, and made as lasting 
an impression. It was in the course of one of 
these excursions into the region of recollection 
that her great-niece was recalled, and the letter to 
Katherine was the direct result. 

“I wonder,” she said, one damp, chill No- 
vember afternoon, as the housemaid put coal on 
the grate fire in the large second story front room, 
before a window of which the old lady sat in an 
invalid chair, ‘‘I wonder if Miss Van Vrancken 
will come ! I suppose she thinks me a tiresome 
old woman, and* imagines that she would have a 
very dull time of it here. But she might at least 
write to me. Isn’t it nearly time for the letter- 
carrier, Ellen ? It has been a week now, since I 
wrote her. ’ ’ 

As she spoke the sound of the door-bell ringing 
came to her ears. 

“Ah ! ” she went on, “ that is perhaps a letter 
from her, now.” 

Ellen put down the coal-scuttle and descended 
the stairs to answer the bell ; and old Mrs. Rourke 
sat silently, and with some little impatience, 


The Lady and Her Tree. 129 

awaiting her return. When she came back it 
was with a card. 

“A lady to see you, Mrs. Rourke,” she said. 

Mrs. Rourke reached eagerly for the card ; but 
when she read the name her face told her disap- 
pointment. 

“ Mrs. Newland Yorke,” she repeated, aloud. 
“ What does she want of me, Ellen ? Tell her I 
am not able to see her. * ’ 

“She says,” replied the girl, “that she is your 
niece, that ’’ 

“ Why didn’t you say so ? ” cried the old lady, 
impatiently. “ Why didn’t you say so? Show 
her up here, at once. Dear me ! To think of 
that child being married ! ’ ’ 

The meeting between the two women was a 
trifle hysterical. Eor old Mrs. Rourke it was an 
event so far aside from her usual routine that her 
nerves were at their greatest tension, and as she 
rose to her feet and embraced her niece, whose 
beauty appeared to her hermit eyes, something al- 
most divine, she shed tears of ebullescent joy. 
As for Katherine, who was already much over- 
wrought when she arrived, the meeting was the 
resultant orgasm of a nerve-racking day. She 
buried her head on her aunt’s shoulder, and wept 


130 The Lady and Her Tree. 

until her eyes were red and swollen, and until the 
good woman that stood feebly supporting her and 
trying to pacify her, became apprehensive for her 
niece’s sanity, knowing no other cause for her 
nervous excitement save this meeting with a 
hitherto unknown kinswoman. 

The tears were to Mrs. Yorke a grateful relief. 
For two hours she had been lying dry-eyed upon 
the couch in her boudoir, staring at the blue cir- 
cles in the ceiling paper, while a thousand prob- 
lems, suspicions, fears, and plans chased one 
another through her actively- working brain. Out 
of all this she had come dazed, yet with one ob- 
ject : to seek the haven of her aunt’s house, which 
had been so opportunely offered. She had en- 
quired her way of the druggist at the corner, and 
had received subsequent instructions from the 
conductor of the car that she had been advised to 
take. The neighborhoods through which she 
passed were as new to her as a strange country, 
and as interesting. The trip had for the time 
diverted her mind from the one trouble that op- 
pressed it, but the meeting with Mrs. Rourke 
had suddenly brought it all back to her, and the 
suddenness with which it came, coupled with a 
new sentiment, born of the old lady’s avowed and 


The Lady and Her Tree. 131 

evident affection, tore her heart strings to rib- 
bons, and her tears flowed in a freshet. 

“ You must think me a very silly girl, auntie, 
dear,” she said at last, between sobs, as she dried 
her eyes on a tiny bit of a cambric, ‘ ‘ but you 
don’t know every thing.” 

“I’m sure I don’t, my darling,” replied Mrs. 
Rourke, with a kindly smile. “Sit down, my 
dear, and let me look at you. As a child, you 
know — as a baby, I mean— we thought we de- 
tected such a resemblance in you to the Katherine 
Lawrence: as I wrote you. But you have grown 
much prettier.” 

Katherine sat down in a chair that Elleli had 
placed for her near that of her aunt, and Mrs. 
Rourke resumed her seat at the window. 

‘ ‘And so you are married ! ’ ’ she pursued. “I 
hope you are very happy with your husband, my 
dear.” 

Whereupon Katherine began to weep afresh ; 
and then she told old Mrs. Rourke the whole 
story: How she had been deceived; how she 

had discovered it ; and, finally, how she had run 
away without leaving a word behind her, and how 
she had come to her for refuge. The story was 
punctuated with sobs, but as it drew to its close 


132 The Lady and Her Tree . 

the narrator’s pique increased with the sympathy 
of her auditor; her tears were heated by indigna- 
tion, and the spirit of revenge rose above a more 
tender sentiment. Mrs. Rourke was very sorry ; 
and she said so. She had been married herself, 
she told her niece, and knew what jealousy was. 
“ But,” she added, “ we are never really so hap- 
py nor so unhappy as we fancy.” 

“As for jealousy, my dear, it is a worm,” she 
pursued, sagely, “and a very nasty, poisonous 
worm. It thrives on falsehood as well as on 
truth. The only worm of the kind I ever had 
any experience with, fed upon falsehood, and for 
years it played havoc not only with my own 
heart, but with 3^our uncle’s as well. I accused 
him unjustly — appearances, you know, are some- 
what as injurious as faults — and he, conscious of 
his innocence, was necessarily resentful. Had it 
been truth that it fed upon, we might have killed 
it long be r ore we did, and ended its poisonous 
ravages.” 

‘ I would much prefer that this worm fed upon 
falsehood,” replied Katherine, quite calmly now 
that all the milk of human kindness within her 
had been embittered by the recital of her wrongs. 
* ‘ In that case I should never have permitted it 


The Lady and Her Tree . 133 

to trouble me. You see, auntie, I know that it is 
the truth.” 

Old Mrs. Rourke smiled. 

“I thought so too, dear,” she said; “I re- 
member that when I heard the story about }^our 
uncle, I felt as though I had lost all my wisdom 
teeth at one pull. ’ ’ 

Then Katherine was shown to her room ; a 
great wide, cheerful third-story front, over that of 
her aunt, with dainty paper of wild rose pattern 
on the wall, and a big, high-post bedstead. 
There was a dressing table draped in filmy white 
material over pink, and a washstand with an old- 
fashioned water jug and basin, and in one corner 
a huge chest of drawers of solid mahogany that 
had evidently been in the family for generations. 
There .she found that Ellen, by Mrs. Rourke’ s 
orders, had deposited her somewhat heavy hand- 
satchel, and by means of a silk waist that it con- 
tained, she effected a change of toilet. 

When she returned to her aunt, the old lady 
had something more to say to her. 

“ My dear,” she suggested, “ if I were in your 
place, I should send a note to my husband. You 
tell me that you came away without telling him 


134 Th e Lady a?id Her Tree. 

where you were going. Two wrongs, you 
know, do not make a right.” 

“ But I do not want him to know where I am,” 
replied Katherine, determinedly, “and I do not 
propose to tell him.” 

“Of course,” continued Mrs. Rourke, “ I do 
not wish to appear dictatorial, and you know 
your own affairs best, my dear ; but it seems to 
me, that if that is your object, you are going in 
precisely the wrong way to accomplish it. ’ ’ 

“ I do not understand you.” 

“Don’t you suppose your husband will en- 
deavor to find you ? ’ ’ 

“I’m sure he will.” 

“And don’t you suppose that he will be able to 
trace you here ? ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ He will never think of such a thing. He 
does not know of your existence.” 

Mrs. Rourke did not press the subject further. 
In a little while the lights were lit, and at six 
o’clock Katherine assisted her aunt down stairs 
to the dining room, where a cold supper was 
served. For two hours and over, after supper, 
she chatted with the old lady over matters of 
family history, and told her of her step-father, and 
of her step-brothers and step-sisters in New York. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 135 

“ My eldest step-brother, Alan,” she said, in 
conclusion, “is as good and generous as he can 
be, but father has a notion that he is a little fast, 
you know, and frowns 011 him. He has been 
away for two or three years, traveling. He is a 
handsome fellow — awfully handsome. He gradu- 
ated from Yale — or rather he went there for three 
years, and then — well, to tell you the truth, I 
don’t think father could afford to keep him there 
any longer.” 

Old Mrs. Rourke retired usually, she said, at 
nine, but on this occasion she .sent the housemaid 
away when she came to assist her, and said she 
would sit up a half hour longer. 

“I have been thinking,” she said to Kather- 
ine, when Ellen had disappeared, “ that, after all, 
my dear, you had better send word to your hus- 
band. Suppose he should report your disappear- 
ance to the police. Wouldn’t it be in the Ledger 
in the morning? You don’t want notoriety of 
this kind, I am sure. ’ ’ 

But Katherine did not think there was any 
likelihood of Newland’s taking such a step. He 
would deplore the notoriety as much as she, and 
would hesitate a long while before adopting the 
course suggested. When, however, she had bid- 


I3> The Lady and Her Tree . 

den her aunt good-night and returned to her 
room, with its wild-rose wall paper and high-post 
bedstead, she began to think the matter over 
more seriously. For an hour she sat with folded 
hands, pondering, her fancies growing more and 
more vivid with every heart-beat. The idea of 
the police looking for her, filled her with a vague 
alarm. She had never had anything to do with 
the police in all her life ; they were strange, hor- 
rible creatures to her ; things of another world 
from hers, and should an officer call at the house 
and enquire for her, she was sure that she should 
die from fright. After due deliberation .she 
changed her mind and resolved to send a note to 
the Salisbury in the morning. If Newland was 
worried about her over night, it would do no 
harm. He might, she argued, begin to value the 
prize that he had disregarded for a bleached singer 
of risque songs. 

The day had been a trying one to her, and, 
now that the excitement was passed, an irresist- 
ible drowsiness assailed her. When, having un- 
dressed and donned her nightgown, she knelt as 
usual at the bedside to say her prayers, sleep in- 
terrupted her petitions, and, sleeping, she 
dreamed. Presently she awoke with a cry. 


The Lady and Her Tree . 137 

“No! No!” she was shrieking, “No! No!” 

She had fancied that Newland had sent a police- 
man after her, and that the officer was dragging 
her half-clad through the street. When she rose 
from her knees and looked at her watch, she found 
that an hour had sped. It was nearly midnight. 
The terror of her dream was still with her, and 
the haunting fear of a burly man in uniform with 
a muscular clutch upon her wrist, was not to be 
.shaken off. After all, she told herself, her aunt 
was right : she must send word to her husband ; 
and she must send it at once. Perhaps the ser- 
vants were not yet in bed. She would get one 
of them to take a note to the nearest messenger 
office. She opened her chamber door. The 
house was dark as a pit, and as silent. 

She dressed herself, hurriedly, putting on her 

1 

hat and her jacket. Then, taking some matches, 
she stole silently, tremblingly down stairs. On 
the second floor she found a door open, and, strik- 
ing a light, looked in, hoping that it might be a 
library, and that she would there discover pen, 
ink and paper ; but it was a spare sleeping room. 
In the parlor she searched a desk for writing ma- 
terial, but in vain. For a brief space she was 
hopeless, and then, suddenly, recalled the fact that 


138 The Lady and Her Tree. 

should she find a messenger office, she would find 
also the means to write the message. 

With great care, lest she should make a noise 
and disturb the sleeping household, she unlocked 
the .street door, and opened it. The rain came 
dashing against her face, blown by a fierce north- 
east wind. She stepped back, and, groping about 
the vestibule, found an umbrella. Then she care- 
fully adjusted the night-latch, and, raising the 
umbrella, started out into the black, wet night. 

At the corner she was fortunate enough to en- 
counter a messenger boy, who showed her the waj' 
to the office to which he was returning. On the 
sheet of yellow paper that was offered her she 
scribbled these words: “Don’t trouble to find 
me. I am stopping with a friend.” And she 
signed it with her full name. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE EADY IN THE BROUGHAM 

j^ATHERINE YORKE’S life at the Rourke 
homestead was necessarily a quiet one. She 
had much time to think about, and her aunt, she 
found, was fond of what she herself called ‘ ‘ medi- 
tation ” — a habit that had doubtless tended not a 
little to her lasting mental vigor. For hours at a 
time they sat together, exchanging remarks only 
at long intervals, each deeply absorbed in her own 
reflections. The result of Katherine’s brooding 
over her imagined wrongs was what she believed 
to be a steady growth in indifference, rather than 
bitterness, toward her husband. At the end of a 
fortnight she had begun to fancy that .she had be- 
come utterly regardless of him, and congratulated 
herself upon having attained that desired end. 
Whether or not he had endeavored to find her, 
she did not know, and— since, if he had, he had 
been unsuccessful — did not care. In a week or 
two more she would return to him — she realized 
that there was no other course open to her - but 


140 The Lady and Her Tree . 

he would hardly recognize her, she told herself, 
as the wife he had known. An icicle would shed 
a grateful warmth in comparison with the chill 
that would be imparted by her manner. She 
more than ever made up her mind to throw her- 
self with all her heart and . soul into society. 
Since the pleasures of domesticity were denied her, 
she determined to seek all the gayer pleasures that 
were offered by the social whirligig. The econ- 
omies that she had practiced out of consideration 
for her husband’s straightened circumstances, she 
resolved to practice no longer. She would afford 
him an idea of the extent of the extravagances in 
which a woman can indulge when she gives her 
wdiole mind to the subject. She would devote 
whatever time and mental effort she might have to 
spare from her task of running up enormous bills 
to arousing her husband’s jealousy. In spite of 
her imagined indifference, she was still smarting 
under the stunning blow that had been dealt her 
devoted and unselfish love; and from the abra- 
sions and bruises inflicted upon her pride ; and 
in these resolutions, she found the most soothing 
balm. 

Mrs. Rourke seldom spoke to her of Newland, 
but, when she did, it was lo urge her not to exag- 


The Lady and Her Tree. 14 1 

gerate her wrongs, and to strive to overlook, as 
far as possible, what might after all be by no 
means so terrible as it appeared to her. On these 
points Katherine very shrewdly refused to argue. 
She formed her plans, unaided by her aunt, and 
formulated her resolves in secret. When she 
talked to the old lady, it was usually about her 
progenitors, and the stories that were told her by 
her octogenarian relative, were often a welcome 
relief from the monotone of her own thoughts. 
In this way she learned much concerning the an- 
cestress after whom both she and her aunt were 
named, not the least interesting stories being how 
she jilted John Penn, the grandson of the founder, 
and how .she and other gentlewomen had inau- 
gurated these now time-honored gatherings, the 
Philadelphia Assemblies. 

“ I have all the old letters to prove this,” the 
old lady would say ; “I wish I could show them 
to you, they are stored away somewhere in boxes 
in the garret, and the garret is inches deep in 
dust.” , 

One day, during the third week of her sojourn, 
a brougham drew up at the door. On the box 
were a coachman and footman in green livery, 
and the harness of the horses, she observed, was 


142 The Lady and Her Tree. 

ilver- mo unted. On the short olive green blankets, 
technically known as ‘ ‘ kidney covers, ’ ’ she des- 
cried the initials, C. B. 

“ Oh, auntie,” she called, excitedly, “who are 
your howling swell friends ? ” 

Mrs. Rourke peered from her window, but was 
unable to make out the personality of her visitors. 
As it proved, there was a single caller, an elderly 
woman, wrapped in furs. 

Ellen brought up the card, and after Mrs. 
Rourke had looked at it, she turned it over to 
her niece, remarking that she did not recall the 
name. 

“ Mrs. Cad walader- Beech ! ” exclaimed Kath- 
erine. ‘ ‘ What on earth does she want? Why, 
you know, auntie dear, she is one of the most 
fashionable women in Philadelphia society.” 

“ I never heard of her,” returned her aunt, a 
little captiously. The name of Cadwalader is 
familiar, of course. We once had a gardener 
called that ; but the only Beeches I know are the 
tree and the street,” and she smiled at her own 
effort at wit. ‘ ‘ Perhaps, my dear, ’ ’ she continued, 
‘ ‘ you had better go down to see her. ’ ’ 

Katherine hesitated. She feared for an instant 
that it might be a message from her husband. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 143 

And yet she could hardly fancy that Mrs. Cad- 
walader-Beech would stoop to such a service. 

‘ ‘ For whom did she ask, Ellen ? ’ ’ she enquired, 
still studying the card. 

“For Mrs. Rourke, ma’am.” 

Katherine stood before the mirror for a moment, 
adjusting the collar of her silk waist, and smooth- 
ing her light brown hair. 

“ I will see her,” she said, and Ellen descended 
with the message. 

In the stately old drawing room, Katherine 
discovered the great lady of her acquaintance, 
standing near a window, gazing out through the 
green venitian blinds at her horses and her coach- 
man. In such a neighborhood she could not 
bring herself to sit down, and she kept as much 
out of the house as was in her power, being of 
necessity in it. 

At the sound of Katherine’s rustling skirts, she 
turned. 

‘ ‘ Mrs. Rourke ! ’ ’ she said ; for the moment 
unable to distinguish in the dim light of the room 
the features of the woman who approached her. 

“No; not Mrs. Rourke,” rejoined Katherine, 
“ Mrs. Newland Yorke.” 

“Ah! Yes! So it is,” Mrs. Cadwalader- Beech 


144 The Lady and Her Tree. 

admitted. “ My eyes were dimmed from looking 
into the sunlight. It is a surprise,” she added. 

“Not more so than this visit,” returned Kath- 
erine, smiling. “ Won’t you be seated ? ” 

Mrs. Cadwalader-Beech ignored the invitation. 

a It was Mrs. Rourke I called to see, ’ ’ she 
began, “ I did not expect ” 

“ No, of course not. But Mrs. Rourke is in- 
disposed. I am her niece.” 

‘ ‘Ah ! ’ ’ and there was a suggestion of a de- 
lighted discovery in the exclamation, mingled 
with a promise of growing frigidity. 

‘ ‘ May I ask to what my aunt is indebted for 
this visit ? ’ ’ questioned Katherine, a little nettled. 

‘ ‘ I came, ’ ’ began Mrs. Cadwalader Beech, ‘ ‘ to 
ask the address of a trained nurse that she is in 
the habit of employing — Miss Youmans. Can 
you give it to me ? ’ ’ 

The tone in which the question was asked was 
chilling, and Mrs. Yorke resented it. 

“I have never heard of her,” she answered, 
not less coldly. 

“ Then I should like you to enquire of your 
— aunt, * ’ continued the caller. It was a command, 
rather than a request, delivered as it might have 
been to a servant. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 145 

‘ ‘ My aunt, ’ ’ returned Katherine, with all the 
dignity that she could command, “ I have already 
told you, is indisposed. I should not think of 
disturbing- her. As for myself: I am very much 
engaged. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Cadwalader-Beech realized that she had 
been tactless. She had come much out of her 
way on this mission, and had no notion of return- 
ing with it unfulfilled. 

“ Might I ask you then,” she began in a con- 
ciliatory tone, “ to find it out at your leisure, and 
forward it to me ? My daughter, Mildred— you 
know her, I think — is very ill, and your aunt’s 
nurse was recommended to me, very highly. Dr. 
L,ewis suggested her. It was he that told me I 
could get her address here. He is, I suppose you 
know, your aunt’s physician.” 

“ No, I did not know,” Katherine replied, “ I 
am sorry to hear of your daughter’s illness.” 

“She is very ill,” repeated Mrs. Cadwalader- 
Beech, and her voice trembled as she recalled the 
girl’s suffering, “ desperately ill, in fact. O, 
Mrs. Yorke, you do not know how anxious I am 
about her ! ’ ’ 

The maternal instinct in Katherine, in spite of 
the . fact that she was herself childless, was de- 


146 The Lady and Her Tree. 

cidedly keen. Instinctively she put herself in her 
visitor’s place, and while still smarting under the 
insolence of her manner, she sympathized with 
her anxiety, and the impulse to aid her got the 
better of her resentment. 

“ I will see if I can get the address for you,” 
she said at last, and hurried off upstairs. 

When she returned she found that Mrs. Cad- 
walader Beech was still standing. She handed 
her a slip of paper on which she had written the 
street and number. 

“ You know nothing of Miss Youmans? ” the 
visitor enquired of her, after thanking her. 

‘ ‘ Nothing. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ I hope she is discreet, ’ ’ she added, half to 
herself ; but Katherine made no reply. Mrs. 
Cad walader- Beech said good afternoon and with- 
drew, and the younger woman made no move to 
follow her to the door. When she had gone 
Katherine stood for a moment, buried in thought. 

She was wondering v liether from this incident 
there might come to her husband’s ears a knowl- 
edge of her whereabouts. She had been very 
well contented for the past few weeks, and her 
isolation had brought to her the peace that she 
most desired. She hoped that Newland w^ould 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


HI 

not come there to disturb it. She did not care to 
see him, and she had no wish to return to the 
Salisbury until she was quite ready. Pier pres- 
ent life was a restful relief, and her object was to 
prolong it, for a little while at least. She heard 
Mrs. Cad walader Beech’s carriage drive away, 
and as she still stood, immersed in contemplation 
of the recent changes in her life, the sound of the 
jangling door bell came to her ears. 

She started to go upstairs, passing Ellen in the 
hall, on her way to the door. On the first step of 
the stairway, she paused and waited to ascertain 
the identity of the caller. She was nervous and 
apprehensive ; a sudden fear had taken possession 
of her, and as she waited and watched, her hand 
trembled on the banister. 

The door opened; and, framed in the opening, 
she saw the tall spare figure of a man. The light 
was at his back, and his features were in shadow, 
and unrecognizable at the distance, but his out- 
line was familiar. Katherine’s heart gave a great 
leap, as though it would escape from her body, 
and then fell back, fluttering weakly. She 
grasped the banister rail with all her strength and 
tried to pull herself up the stairs ; but everything 
had suddenly grown dark before her ; and a sound 


148 The Lady and Her Tree. 

like tlie rushing of many waters was in her ears. 
The darkness increased ; the sound died away to 
a far-off murmur ; and when, a second later, Ellen 
came back through the hall w'th the gentleman’s 
card, it was to find Mrs. Yorke lying limp and 
lifeless upon the lower steps of the stairway. 


CHAPTER XIII 


ADVICE: PROFESSIONAL AND OTHERWISE 

^^HEN Katherine found her way back to con- 
sciousness, it was to discover that she was 
lying on one of the long, hair-cloth sofas in the 
parlor, and that a gentleman whom she had never 
seen before was sitting beside her, with a bottle of 
smelling salts in his hand. He was a very hand- 
some man, with an olive skin, and a heavy droop- 
ing mustache ; but what Katherine observed par- 
ticularly were his eyes, which were, it seemed to 
her, the tenderest, most sympathetic, and most 
beautiful into which she had ever looked. They 
w T ere large, dark brown, and long lashed as a wom- 
an’s. She noticed too, that he was extremely well- 
dressed, and when the odor of the salts that was 
still in her nostrils, departed, it gave place to a 
delicate scent of orris, which the man at her side 
seemed to exhale. Gradually a recollection of 
the opening door and the figure within it, broke 
in upon her, and with it, came the realization that 
she had fainted, and that she had been recalled to 
consciousness by the stranger at her side. 


150 The Lady and Her Tree. 

“ You are all right again, now, I think,” he 
was saying, in a voice that was like a caress. 

“Yes, thank you,” Mrs. Yorke returned, sit- 
ting up hurriedly, rather ashamed of her plight, 
“ quite right again.” 

“I am Mrs. Rourke’s physician,” continued 
her companion, with a smile, “ fortunately I just 
happened in, in time.” 

In the doorway, Katherine saw Ellen standing, 
and in her desire for information she permitted 
the doctor’s introduction to go unheeded. The 
girl’s face wore an expression of relief from 
anxiety. 

“Ellen,” she called, “where is Mr. Yorke?” 

“ Mr. Yorke! ” repeated the girl. 

“Yes. He called, just as I— fainted. You let 
him in, did you not ? Where is he ? ” 

The girl looked dazed, and, for a moment, 
made no answer. The doctor smiled ; and the 
smile enlightened her. 

“ It was Dr. Eewis,” said Ellen. 

Katherine sighed. The situation was freed 
from its embarrassment by the comfort that the 
news brought her. 

“ How stupid of me! ” .she said, smiling. 

The doctor made no allusion to the incident. 


The Lady and Her Tree . 151 

‘ ‘ It was nervousness, 5 ’ lie continued ; ‘ ‘ your 
face and neck were suffused. Had you remained 
unconscious a moment longer, I should have had 
mustard plasters on the soles of your feet. ’ * 

He looked at her critically for a brief spac.", 
with one eye half closed — a professional perlustra- 
tion. 

“ Your nerves have undergone a good deal of 
a strain of late,” he concluded ; “ will you allow 
me to write you a prescription ? ’ ’ 

“ I shall be delighted,” she answered. 

‘ ‘ I understand you are making something of a 
visit to your aunt?” he went on, as he drew a 
small tablet from his pocket, and began to write. 

. “ Yes, I have been here over a fortnight.” 

‘ ‘ I should fancy such a household very restful 
for the nerves. Mrs. Rourke is a delightful old 
lady, but I cannot imagine much excitement in 
the daily routine of her home.” 

“It is charming here, ’ ’ Katherine replied. 
She detected the delicate method of his invitation 
for enlightenment as to the cause of her indispo- 
sition, but she was in no mood to take him into 
her confidence. 

“Pardon me!” he pursued, still writing, and 
with his eyes still fixed upon the paper. “You 


152 The Lady and Her Tree. 

have recently suffered an affliction. Your present 
nervous condition tells me that, more effectively 
than any words you could employ.” 

Mrs. Yorke was silent. She was half inclined 
to laugh and half inclined to cry. His interest in 
her touched the pathetic side of her nature, and 
his tactful efforts at inducing a confession from 
her, appealed to her .sense of humor. Between 
the two silence was thi middle ground, and on 
this she took a position. 

From her aunt, when the man of medicine had 
gone, she learned that he was one of the most 
fashionable physicians in the city — Dr. Dayton 
Lewis, of whom she had heard frequently, but 
whom she had never before seen. And then she 
fell to wondering whether, after all, it was she 
that had been outwitted ; whether he knew about 
her disappearance, and more than half understood 
the reason, while she sat there fancying that he 
was groping blindly in the field of chance specu- 
lation. 

On the second day after this visit, Mrs. Rourke 
was taken suddenly ill, and Dr. Lewis was sent 
for, at once. He came prompt^, and relieved 
Katherine’s anxiety by telling her that such at- 
tacks were of periodical occurrence with the old 


The Lady and Her Tree . 


153 


lady, and that she hnd never failed to rally 
quickly under treatment. He had found Mrs. 
Yorke much perturbed, and he had soothed her 
in such gentle fashion, that she was won by his 
delicacy and sympathy. 

“ Your nerves are still far from right,” he ob- 
served, as he was about to go, “ and this little af- 
fair has not done them any good. Have you 
been taking my medicine ? ’ ’ 

Katherine looked into his great, kindly, brown 
eyes, and laughed. 

“ No,” she answered, frankly. 

He seemed a little hurt, rather than angry. 

“And why not?” he asked, .simply. “Had 
you no confidence in me ? ’ ’ 

“ O, yes,” she answered, still smiling, “but — 
you will think me very foolish, if I tell you.” 

‘ ‘ I think you very unkind, already, ’ ’ he said. 

They were standing in the hall at the foot of 
the stairs, where she had fainted two days before. 
It was in the afternoon, and the gas not having 
yet been lighted, the hall was in semi-darkness. 

“No, I am not that,” she protested, “but — I 
fancied you knew more about me, and why I am 
here, than you intimated, and it made me angry, 
and I tore up the prescription, in spite,” 


154 The Lady and Her Tree . 

“Which was very, very wrong of you.” 

‘ ‘ I know it was. ’ * 

“I’m afraid you are given to that sort of 
thing.” 

‘ ‘ To what sort of thing ? ’ ’ 

“To jumping at conclusions, and acting upon 
them. ’ ’ 

“Why?” 

“I think that is the cause of your present 
exile.” 

“ Then you do know,” she cried, almost ex- 
ultantly, “ I knew you did.” 

“ But I did not know when I was here before,” 
he rejoined, “ I heard some gossip at the club last 
night, and I put two and two together. I can 
tell you one thing, Mrs. Yorke — You are making 
a mistake.” 

“Thank you!” 

“You may consider it impertinent of me to offer 
the suggestion,” he continued, “ and I dare say 
it is, but I repeat, that 3^ou are making a mistake. 
When men get to discussing the private affairs of 
a man and his wife in the clubs, it is time that 
something should be done to quiet their wagging 
tongues. ’ ’ 


The Lady and Her Tree . 155 

“ I quite agree with you,” she replied, “but in 
this case it is not I that should do it.” 

“You think your husband is in error ? ” 

“ Undoubtedly.” 

“Well then, you should go to him, and tell 
him so. ’ ’ 

“You do not know wliat you suggest,” she 
said, with much feeling. “You do not know 
how he has wronged me. It is not an easy thing 
for a woman to have her pride trodden upon, and 
after it has been so treated to leave it lying in the 
dirt, and to go on just as if she had never pos- 
sessed it. ’ ’ 

Dr. Uewds made no answer. He stood looking 
at her in the half light of the wide hallway. She 
was very beautiful ; her indignation had flushed 
her cheeks with color, and her eyes sparkled with 
the fire of her resentment. He reached forward, 
took her hand, and pressed it tenderly. 

‘ ‘ I know, ’ ’ he said, kindly ; “I know how 
you feel, and you have all my sympathy. I do 
say that you have not had cause for all you have 
done — at least I am sure that you think you have 
— but, at the same time, it will be better that you go 
back to your husband, and to go back at once.” 

There was something in his voice that com- 


156 The Lady and Her Tree. 

manded obedience. Such advice from any other 
person, Katherine would have rebelled against, 
but from this man whom she had known only two 
days she accepted it as a favor. She prized his 
consideration and craved his interest. The touch 
of his hand thrilled her. The pink in her face 
came and went again. Her gaze fell. She did 
not dare to look at him, lest he discover the ef- 
fect he had upon her, an effect she was loath to 
admit even to herself. 

“ I want you to go back,” he repeated, plead- 
ingly. “ Not for his sake so much, as for your 
own. Will you promise me?” 

”1 do not want to go,” she answered, with 
eyes still lowered. ‘ ‘ I — I do not think I should 
go, while Mrs. Rourke is so ill.” 

‘ ‘ That does not enter into it, ’ ’ he added, firmly; 

‘ ‘ your aunt has a nurse who is fully capable. 
She does not require you, and your husband does. 
Your first duty, you know, is to him.” 

‘ ‘ I owe him nothing, ’ ’ Katherine cried, the 
suggestion rousing her indignation, ‘ ‘ I owe him 
less than nothing. I hate him.” 

Her anger had betrayed her into a confession 
that she would gladly have recalled, had it been 
possible, 


The Lady and Her Tree . 157 

“ Go back to him,” repeated the doctor ; “lov- 
ing or hating, go back to him. I want you to 
give me j^our word that you will do as I ask.” 
His voice was low, but his utterance was weighted 
with determined purpose. 

To refuse, Katherine felt, was impossible. 
Whatever he had bidden her to do at that moment 
she would have done. In some magic way he 
seemed to have woven a spell about her from 
which she could find no escape, and wished none. 

“ I will go,” she said, simply. 

‘ ‘ When ? ” he asked. 

“ Tomorrow.” 

He pressed her hand as to thank her, and then 
released it. When she looked up, the street door 
had closed after him. 


CHAPTER XIV 


HUSBAND AND WIFE) 


ORKE, meanwhile, had been much perturbed. 



The brief note that he had received at the 
climax of his agitation over his wife’s unexplained 
absence, changed his anxiety to anger. To him 
its real motive was unknown. He fancied, of 
course, that it was an outgrowth of Katherine’s 
brooding over his visit to New York, and 
the stupidly blundering ‘ ‘ personal ’ ’ in the 
Herald. But what most perplexed him, was the 
refuge that she had chosen. Her acquaintances 
in Philadelphia were few, and as he mentally went 
over the list he could think of no one in whom 
she would be likely to confide, and under whose 
roof she would seek shelter. Just here a chance 
thought came to him of convents, such as he had 
read of in books. He recalled that some one had 
once said — “Women love always; when earth 
slips from them, they take refuge in heaven,’’ 
but he knew little of convents outside of romance, 
and did not believe that his wife knew more. To 


The Lady and Her Tree. 159 

make enquiry among his friends would excite the 
very suspicion that he most wished to avoid. He 
now regretted even the telegram that he had sent 
to New York. It would require explanation. 
He regretted his consultation with Mr. Pember- 
ton for the same reason, and, most of all, he de- 
plored his visit to Miss Logan. From that quar- 
ter a whisper would undoubtedly go forth, and 
with Mrs. Yorke’s absence to give it color, what 
might not be said ? 

He set himself to work to devise a plausible 
story, but found this by no means easy, hampered 
as he was by his own utter ignorance of his wife’s 
whereabouts. At length, however, he decided to 
tell enquirers at home that Mrs. Yorke had been 
called suddenly to New York to the bedside of a 
dying relative ; and to advise the family in New 
York that the cause of his anxiety was her unex- 
pected absence from home, the result of an errand 
of mercy to the house of a friend who was very 
ill. 

This latter tale he told the next day in Gotham 
with as clever a semblance of truthfulness as was 
possible for a man that detested falsehood. And 
on the day following — for he returned without so 
much as looking in at the Horse Show — he re- 


l6o The Lady and Her Tree. 

hearsed the other story, with a little more effroth> 
ery, born of the success of the first effort, to Mr. 
Pemberton. 

Each morning and each afternoon he looked for 
some additional tidings of his absent wife, but 
nothing came, and, after two days, he began to 
grow more and more a 1 armed. The message that 
she had sent him was eminently unsatisfactory. 
Angry as he was, he was not bereft of interest in 
her, and her prolonged absence provoked some- 
thing more than mere curiosity to find her. For 
a week he hoped against hope for her return, and 
then he sought a private detective, and, with 
many admonitions as to secrecy and discretion, 
placed the matter in his hands. The private de- 
tective had at one time been connected with the 
Pinkerton Agency, and he was rarely astute. 

Yorke’s instructions were to discover Mrs. 
Yorke’s present place of residence, and what par- 
ticulars were possible, without divulging to her, 
or to those near her, that any search was in pro- 
gress. 

In less than a week he was in possession of all 
the important facts. From the druggist at the 
corner the detective learned that Mrs. Yorke had 
enquired the way to Sliackamaxon street ; from 


The Lady and Her Tree. i6l 

the District Messenger office nearest to that thor- 
oughfare he learned that she had sent a message 
to the Salisbury at about midnight on the day she 
had disappeared ; from shopkeepers and other 
neighbors he learned that a woman answering 
her description had come to live, on or about that 
day, at the residence of old Mrs. Rourke, whose 
history — seeing that she had dwelt in the same 
house for nearly half a century, was easily ob- 
tainable ; and from the servants in the Rourke 
homestead , itself, he secured, without seeming to 
be at all inquisitive or having the least object in 
view, the information that the visitor was a niece 
of their mistress. 

Thus fortified with information, Yorke’s anx- 
iety dwindled. He ascertained, moreover, that 
his wife was very well, and apparently most 
cheerful. And now that his anxiety was once 
more allayed, his anger at her course reasserted 
itself. He gave instructions to the detective to 
keep him acquainted with her movements, and, 
from that moment strove, so far as it lay in his 
power, to cast her from his mind, and to give his 
attention wholly to business, which, for a fort- 
night, owing to his disquietude, had been in a 
measure neglected. 


162 The Lady and Her Tree. 

Not many days after this the detective ap- 
peared, early one afternoon, in his private office 
and whispered to him that Mrs. Yorke was at the 
Salisbury. He had ridden dowm in the same car 
with her ; he had followed her up in the elevator, 
and he had seen her enter her own apartments. 
He had, moreover, seen a large hand-satchel of 
hers delivered from the house in Shackamaxon 
street to a local expressman, and had heard the 
directions given to take it to the Salisbury. 

Therefore, Yorke at once began to turn over 
the numerous plans that he had arranged for his 
conduct when he should meet his wife again. 
He rehearsed the words with which he intended to 
greet her. He drilled himself in the arguments he 
proposed to use to prove that she had committed 
in deserting him a sin that was unpardonable. 
He even thought of his attitude of body when he 
should face her, and how he should w r ear an in- 
jured expression that would show her at once 
that he considered her very much in the wrong. 

When, however, at five o’clock that evening, 
just as the sun was sinking, and dusk filled the 
rooms, he entered the apartment, he forgot his 
set phrases ; and, coming suddenly upon Kather- 
ine seated at her escritoire, writing, he exclaimed 


The Lady and Her Tree. 163 

suddenly, common placedly, with the only words 
that presented themselves at the moment : 

“ Hello! You’re back again, eh! ” 

She looked up, as much surprised as he. She 
had not expected him until an hour later, at the 
earliest. 

“Yes,” she answered, “ I ” and then she 

hesitated. She too had fashioned in her mind 
this first conversation, and it was taking an alto- 
gether different trend. 

Yorke looked at her critically. She did not 
seem to have lost flesh in her fortnight’s absence. 
She was just as plump and just as fair as when he 
had seen her last. He cast about for something 
to say. He had walked into the room with his 
overcoat still on, and his gloves, too, which he 
now proceeded to remove. He had previously 
determined to give no hint of his knowledge con- 
cerning her, but the only words that came to him, 
and that seemed to force their way out between 
his teeth were these : 

“ I hope you enjoyed your visit! ” 

“ Exceedingly,” Katherine replied. 

“ Your letter was somewhat brief,” he added, 
sarcastically. She made no answer for a moment, 
but bent her head over her writing. 


164 The Lady and Her Tree . 

“I was persuaded to send what I did,” she 
said at last ; defiantly, ‘ ‘ I had no intention of 
writing to you.” 

“I have to thank your persuader then, and 
not you,” returned Yorke. Her words froze the 
gradually thawing ice of his mood. His anger 
grew more bitter. He could not trust himself to 
say more, and turned away to the hall, where he 
pulled off his coat, savagefy, and hung it upon 
the rack. He walked by the boudoir, in which 
he had found his wife, into the drawing room, 
and pressing a button in the wall lighted the 
chandelier. The same magazine that he had 
picked up on that eventful night over two weeks 
before was still lying upon the table, and he took 
it up once again, and seated himself, but not un 
til he had been holding it fully fifteen minutes 
did he realize that it was wrong side up, 
and that a reversed advertising page was be- 
fore him. Then he threw it down angrily, and 
rising, paced the floor. His resolution to make a 
full confession to Katherine, formed on the occa- 
sion of her disappearance and his anxiety con- 
cerning her, had long ago been cast away. He 
was in no mind now to take any steps toward 
mollifying her. She had misjudged him. If he 


The Lady and Her Tree. 165 

suffered from the consequences of this misjudg- 
ment, there was to him a cruel satisfaction in the 
belief that she too suffered ; and he was willing 
that she should be so punished. 

After a while he threw himself upon the couch 
whereupon he had dreamed on that other occa- 
sion, but he did not dream now. He lay awake, 
thinking, wondering where all this would end, 
speculating whether the estrangement would 
grow — whether the breach would widen, or 
whether, gradually, these now strange relations 
would come to be familiar matters of everyday 
life, the usual, rather than the unusual. There 
was a certain satisfaction, to be sure, in having 
his wife again under the same roof with him, but 
then, she was not the same wife that she used to 
be, and he asked himself whether, after all, he 
cared to have this new wife. In the old days, 
his wife had been a pleasure, a delight, congenial, 
companionable, bright, happy, joyous. Now she 
was like a ghost of the past — an unpleasant re- 
minder, with whom, though she chose to continue 
in her present vein, he was doomed to live hence- 
forth. 

The door bell rang, and he rose to answer it, 
but Katherine was there before him. He heard 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


1 66 

her asking for a messenger to go to a florists. 
She had written down what she wanted, she said. 
It was that she was writing when Yorke came in. 
Her husband returned to the drawing room, and 
stood for some minutes looking out of the win- 
dow. Presently the clock struck six. He 
crossed to Katherine’s boudoir and entered with- 
out knocking. Over a chair lay her last-pur- 
chased evening gown, ready to be put on. She 
was standing in front of a mirror arranging her 
hair. 

“ Would you prefer to dine here in the rooms, 
to-night, or up-stairs?” Yorke asked. 

She did not answer him for a second. Then, 
without changing her position, or ceasing a mo- 
ment in her braiding, she replied : 

“lam dining out this evening.” 

Yorke gave evidence of his surprise. 

“Dining out!” he repeated, in astonishment, 
“With whom?” 

‘ ‘ Mrs. Potts gives a dinner before the Dancing 
Class.” 

“And I?” he asked. 

“ I accepted for you.” 

“O, you did!” 

“Yes, I thought I told you.” 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


167 


“ I do not know that I care to go.” 

‘ ‘ Perhaps you had better, ’ ’ Katherine returned, 
calmly ; “ one must do things, now and then, for 
the sake of appearances. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ I didn’ t imagine you believed in that theory. ’ ’ 
“ I have had it preached to me,” she replied, 
‘ * and I am a convert. However, you can please 
yourself. ’ ’ 

For answer Yorke went into his dressing room, 
and got into his evening clothes. * 


CHAPTER XV 


FROM HOMAGE TO HOSTILITY 

^T the dinner given by Mrs. Jack Potts, Mrs. 

Yorke was scintallant. From the moment 
that she appeared in the drawing room, through- 
out the seven courses at table, up to the instant 
of her departure for Mrs. Brokaw’s subscription 
dance, she shed upon the company a brilliancy of 
fancy that amused and delighted. Her wit was 
delicate and appropriate, her humor was spon- 
taneous and contagious, her banter was refined 
and good natured, and her retorts were quick and 
apposite. Her husband, in spite of his annoy- 
ance, was proud of her, and the rest of the party 
involuntarily conceded, and enthusiastically ap- 
plauded her conversational supremacy. Physic- 
ally, too, she was at her best, and her gown was 
strikingly becoming. Tad Pemberton, who sat 
opposite her, devoured her with greedy eyes, and 
Montie Willington’s admiration was echoed in 
every word he spoke. Big, blond Jack Potts, too, 


The Lady and Her Tree . 169 

who had taken her in to dinner, seemed thor- 
oughly under the spell of her fascinations, while 
as fox his alterego , “Duke” Nolan, a round, 
rubicand little fellow, with that tell-tale flush of 
over-indulgence in his face, he whispered to Miss 
Bassett, who sat beside him, that he considered 
Mrs. Yorke: “ a stunnah, by George, don’t you 
know! ” 

The homage that performed so prominent a part 
at the dinner, however, ^yas tempered not a little 
at the subsequent dance by something quite the 
reverse. Katherine had not been in the hall over 
ten minutes before the chilliness of the social at- 
mosphere in certain quarters became apparent. 
Mrs. Brokaw, herself, had received her most 
frigidly, and this was the more marked by reason 
of the contrasting cordiality with which she 
greeted Mrs. Potts, who came just after her. The 
Countess Rapsberg, a tall showy young woman, 
with an abundance of bust and a superabundance 
of tawny, crispy hair — a Philadelphia wife separ- 
ated, but not divorced from her titled German 
lord — had scarcely noticed the bow with which 
Mrs. Yorke had favored her ; and Mrs. Wistar- 
Rittenhouse, a sister of Mrs. Cadwalader-Beecli, 
had taken pains to give her the cut direct, staring 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


170 

straight into her eyes as she passed her, without 
a sign of recognition in the stare. 

This cold wave, culminating in the icy rude- 
ness of one of the undisputed leaders of the smart- 
est set in Philadelphia society, drove the color 
from Katherine’s cheeks, and caused her to bite 
her lips in a sudden fit of passionate auger. For 
a moment every thing about her was hazy and 
indistinct. People passed and repassed her as 
shadows, without form. She forgot, for the time 
being, the man with whom she was walking. 
His words made no impression upon her. They 
were lost amid the unintelligible chatter of many 
voices, and the melodious strains of the violins. 
Hei eyes and her ears were turned inward, and 
she was asking the why and the wherefore of the 
insults to which she had just been subjected. Dr. 
Lewis had warned her against the gossip that was 
already rife. It was this gossip then — the story 
that she had quarreled with, and deserted her 
husband — that had made her a social leper. But 
Mrs. Cadwalader-Beech, she began to tell herself 
— Mrs. Cadwalader-Beech knew that she was 
simply visiting her aunt who was ill. She had 
done Mrs. Cadwalader-Beech a service, and in 
return Mrs. Cadwalader-Beech would, no doubt, 


The Lady and Her Tree. 1 7 1 

champion her. Mrs. Wistar-Rittenhouse could 
not have heard the truth, or she would not have 
been so cruel. She wondered where Mrs. Cad- 
walader-Eeech was. She would be present, of 
course, unless her daughter’s illness had taken a 
still more serious turn, and, if Mrs. Cadwalader- 
Beech spoke to her, she could afford to laugh at 
the others, to snap her fingers at them. This 
was Philadelphia, then! Self-righteous, prudish, 
puritanical, straightlaced, suspicious. * 

When, suddenly, her revery ended, she came 
back to the room and the company, the lights, the 
decorations and the music, she heard some one 
speaking to her, and then remembered that it was 
Montie Willington who was beside her. 

“ By Jove! ” he was saying in a half- whisper, 
“I’ll bet you let out our secret to that old cat.’’ 

“What?’’ queried Katherine, groping after 
his meaning. ‘ ‘ Who ? What secret ? ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Didn’ t you see her ? ’ ’ 

“See whom?” 

“The Cadwalader-Beech woman.” 

“No! Where?” 

“ There, just back of us. Do you mean to say 
you didn’t see the way she looked at you? ” 

“ I didn’t know she was here,” 


1*12 The Lady and Her Tree . 

“Lucky for you,” lie laughed, “I’m sure, 
though, you must have let fall our secret— 
Spring Garden street, you know — and she has 
found it.” 

i * Spring Garden street ? ’ ’ repeated Katherine, 
musingly. 

“ Yes ; don’t you remember I ” 

“ O, yes ; of course! No, I don’t think — Ah! ” 
she exclaimed, suddenly, a light breaking upon 
her, ‘ ‘ you are a lantern to my feet, Mr. Willing- 
ton,’’ and she laughed merrily. 

‘ ‘A good joke ? ’ ’ he asked. 

“Capital,’’ Katherine answered, still laugh- 
ing ; “it is the most amusing thing I have heard 
of, in a long while. I never for one instant fan- 
cied that you were in earnest about Spring Gar- 
den street, and up-town, and all that ; but now— - 
O, it can’t be! ” 

“Can’t it?’’ observed Montie, convincingly, 
“ Well, you’ll find out, if, as I suspect, you have 
confided to Mrs. Cadwalader- Beech your birth 
place ; that’s all.’’ 

The orchestra had struck into a waltz, and all 
the floor was seemingly in motion ; debutantes, in 
filmy white ; young matrons in light silks ; dow 
agers in black velvet. 


The Lady and Her Tree . 173 

“ Come! ” said Montie ; and Katherine and he 
joined the throng of dancers. 

“She’s a nice one to cut anybody! ’’ the young 
man observed, as, in the whirl, they passed near 
where Mrs. Cad walader- Beech was sitting, with a 
homely and neglected bud niece under her wing. 

“Why? ’’ asked Katherine, curiously. 

Montie laughed. 

“ I wish, I dared tell you,’’ he said. 

“ Daren’t you? ’’ 

“I’m afraid not. It may get into the news- 
papers, though, and then you’ll know. 

“And can the newspapers print what you 
wouldn’t tell me ? ’’ 

“ I have some respect for modesty;’’ rejoined 
Montie, smiling. “Some of the newspapers 
haven’t.’’ 

When the music ceased they stopped, but not 
until then. At that juncture a tall man ap- 
proached, bowing to Mrs. Yorke, and Willington 
withdrew. It was Dr. Lewis, looking handsomer 
than usual, Katherine thought, in the faultless 
black and white of his evening clothes. 

“ It is shocking! ’’ he said, frankly. 

“ What ? ” she asked, in utter ignorance of his 
meaning. 


174 The Lady arid Her Tree. 

“This conspiracy against you,” he went on. 
‘ ‘ Come, let us find some corner where we can 
talk, and not be overheard.” 

He led her away in search of sequestration. 
The hall in which the Tuesday Dances are held 
does not offer many opportunities for tete-a-tetes y 
and the Doctor was not very successful. He 
found, however, a more or less secluded nook, by 
which people passed at intervals. 

“You don’t mean to say,” he began, when 
they were seated, “ that you have not noticed it.” 

“How very humiliating you are!” she re- 
joined, with mock offence. “ It is not a pleasant 
subject.” 

“It is a decidedly unpleasant one, I admit,” 
he pursued, with feeling, “but I thought you 
might be curious about it, and I am in a position 
to enlighten you. I am Mrs. Cad walader- Beech’s 
physician, you know.” 

“Yes, I know.” 

“She told me with great indignation that you, 
the niece of a woman that lived in Kensington — 
‘ an impossible neighborhood, ’ to use her own 
phraseology — had actually contrived to get into 
society, and that she meant to leave no stone un- 
turned to drive you back to your place. I ar- 


The Lady and Her Tree . 175 

gued with her, but I might as well have tried to 
talk the Delaware into turning back from its 
course to the sea.” 

“It is the unpardonable sin, I suppose,” 
laughed Mrs. Yorke ; “it really seems most ri- 
diculous. I should never have believed it, but 
for this episode. And has everybody in society, 
always lived down -town ? ” 

‘ ‘ He that has not, has managed in some 
way to make society forget that he ever 
lived elsewhere in Philadelphia. Had j^our aunt 
resided on Hester street, New York, your chances 
would have been better.” 

Dr. Lewis evidently did not believe with Balzac 
that one must put cloaks on all truths, even the 
nicest. He usually led out his truths naked, and 
appeared to delight in the consternation that they 
created. Those he produced for Mrs. Yorke’ s 
delectation were clad only in a thin veil of cynicism . 

“ My case is hopeless then, you think, doc- 
tor?” She asked the question playfully. It still 
seemed to her that the whole affair must be a 
burlesque. 

“In time, perhaps,” he replied, with some 
irony, “it may be forgotten that you visited 


176 The Lady and Her Tree . 

Shackamaxou street, where one of your kins- 
women resided. ’ ’ 

“And if it were known,” persisted Katherine, 
with a recklessness born of her present mood, 

‘ ‘ that I first saw the light of day on Spring Gar- 
den street and lived there until I was seven years 
old ” 

‘ ‘ Did you ? ” he interrupted. 

“I did.” 

‘ ‘ Then, ’ ’ he answered, with feigned seriousness, 
“should that fact become known, I see no salva- 
tion for you. With such people as Mrs. Cad- 
walader- Beech, 3^011 are siinpty out of the ques- 
tion.” 

“And the Assembly ? ” she queried. 

“The Assembly! ” he cried, raising his hands 
in mock horror at the suggestion ; “a native of 
Borneo would be more welcome. ’ ’ 

And then they both laughed. But in the mer- 
riment of Mrs. Yorke there was something of 
chagrin, mingled with indignation. What seems 
very ludicrous is sometimes very serious. Never 
before, as far back as she could remember, had 
she ever experienced anything like this. In the 
early days of her married life she had, as has al- 
ready been told, spent some time abroad, where 


The Lady and Her Tree. 177 

she had met and been entertained by men and 
women of noble birth and elevated rank, without 
a question as to her antecedents. In New York 
her position had never been disputed. She had 
received, and had been received by, the best of the 
ultra fashionable folk of the metropolis. It was 
reserved for Philadelphia, with its ridiculous as- 
sumption of superiority, to snub her, and she 
could see no way in which she might revenge her- 
self. She bethought her of what her aunt had 
told her about her ancestress— Katherine Law- 
rence — but to trumpet such matters of family 
history into the ears of women who had turned 
from her with a sneer 011 their lips was scarcely 
practicable. Moreover she did not care to de- 
pend on those who had gone before for what she 
believed she was entitled to, by right of her own 
personality. The incident of this evening had 
given her a new ambition. She would not rest 
content until she had humbled those who had 
made an effort to humble her. Though no means 
were at present at hand, she determined to leave 
no cranny unsearched to find them. She had a 
few friends, at all events, and if these few would 
aid her, everything was possible. 

Three w 7 eeks ago she would have retired in 


i7» 


The Lady a?id Her Tree . 


disgust from the fray for which she was now 
eager. At that time she regarded her home life 
as all sufficient to her. At heart, society bored, 
rather than amused, her. But her home life had 
lost its savor. She had turned to society for dis- 
traction, and for whatever compensation it might 
afford ; and to give it up, at the moment she most 
required it, was not in reason to be expected of 
her. The fight for place, would merely add zest 
to that diversion. 

“You have fallen among Pharisees, my dear 
Mrs. Yorke,” Dr. L,ewis was saying; “you are 
getting an idea of the hospitality of Philadel- 
phia — so much vaunted — when it happens to be 
one of its own, and not a stranger, that knocks 
at its door.” 

“At that moment Tad Pemberton came up to 
claim her for the waltz, and she went off laugh- 
ing, as though she regarded it all as a huge joke. 
Here and there she heard whispers about her as 
she passed, usually uttered by people whom she 
did not know ; but she gave no sign of her an- 
noyance, or even that she was conscious of being 
the subject of remark. 

Just before supper, as she stopped breathless 
after a mad frolic about the crowded room with 


The Lady and Her Tree . 179 

Jack Potts, the appearance of Dr. L,ewis, with sol- 
emn face, pushing his way towards her, startled her 
out of her natural self-possession. Intuitively she 
knew that he brought ill tidings, and when he 
thrust a half sheet of note paper into her hand and 
bade her read, she was not surprised. It was from 
the trained nurse that she had left that day attend- 
ing upon her aunt : it conveyed the new T S that Mrs. 
Rourke’s condition had suddenly changed for the 
worse, and it bade Dr. Rewis come without delay. 

“I fear,” he said solemnly, as her eyes ran 
nervously down the page, “ I fear that this may 
mean the end . Y our aunt is a very old woman , and 
her heart has been in jeopardy for years. If you 
care to accompany me, a place in my carriage is 
at your disposal.” 

The shock to Katherine was painful. Her first 
sensation was one of umbrage at the man beside 
her, who, in pleading with her to leave Mrs. 
Rourke, had persuaded her that her aunt’s illness 
was not serious; but this was almost instantly 
succeeded by a desire to atone as far as possible 
for what appeared to her like neglect, and she ac- 
cepted gladly the proffered conveyance. She 
made her way quickly to the reception room, 
looking eagerly for her husband to inform him of 


180 The Lady and Her Tree. 

her intended action, but Yoike was not in 

vSight. 

She hurriedly donned her cloak ; and over her 
slippers she slipped a pair of fur-lined carriage 
shoes. In the passageway to the street, she met 
Montie Willington. 

“Won't you kindly find Mr. Yorke for me,” 
she said, nervously, “and tell him that I have 
just received word that my aunt is very ill ; and 
that I am going to her, with Dr. Lewis? ” 

As she finished speaking, the doctor was at her 
si !e. 

‘ ‘ Come ! ” he urged , starting down the stairs. 
“ We have no time to lose! ” 

A moment sufficed to call his carriage to the 
door. 

Under the awning, over the length of muddied 
carpet, stretched across the sidewalk to the curb, 
Katherine followed the physician. To the coach- 
man Dr. Lewis delivered his directions in a loud, 
clear voice : 

“Mrs. Rourke’s, Shackamaxon street.” 

Dr. Dick Turpin passing in at that moment 
recognized his fellow disciple of Esculapius; 
recognized, too, the woman who accompanied 
him, and heard the address given. 


The Lo,dy and Her Tree. 181 

“It is true, then,” he muttered to himself. 
‘ ‘ Who would have believed it ? She certainly 
has the appearance and the manners of a lady.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


TWO CALLS OF CONDOLENCE 
Public Ledger published a brief obituary of 



Mrs. Rourke, out of respect for her eighty 
odd years. It is a habit with that journal thus 
to reward longevity. The article, however, made 
no mention of any of her distinguished progeni- 
tors, and the fact that one of them had been in- 
strumental in organizing the Assemblies, was, of 
course, omitted. It included such important par- 
ticulars as the early avocation of her husband, 
Michael Rourke, who had run away to sea when 
a mere lad, and the unnecessary addendum that 
one of his brothers, now deceased, had established 
the firm of Rourke & Bass, fish dealers. The 
information had evidently been gleaned from the 
collateral Rourkes— descendants of the fish deal- 
ers — who abounded in the neighborhood, and 
crowded the house, on the day of the funeral, with 
themselves and their progeny. This kindly no- 
tice was respectfully held back by the newspaper 
until after the obsequies, and printed on Saturday, 


The Lady and Her Tree . 183 

as news-matter, in the advertising supplement 
issued on that day. 

Whether Katherine Yorke would ever have 
seen it, had it not been for Mr. Thaddeus Pem- 
berton, is a question. The fact remains, how- 
ever, that it was he that brought the article to 
her attention, calling at the Salisbury with it, on 
the afternoon of the day it appeared. His visit 
was ostensibly one of condolence, but in reality it 
had quite another object — an object that no man 
in his sound senses would have dared to enter- 
tain. But Mr. Thaddeus Pemberton, as it very 
promptly developed, was not in his sound senses. 
In a word, Tad had been drinking, not wisely, 
but too well, and he looked upon matters through 
lenses that possessed a magnifying power of no 
small degree. 

He had, for instance exaggerated Katherine’s 
consent to favor him with a waltz at the Tuesday 
Dance, with a confession on her part of the pas- 
sion that he had been for months endeavoring to 
excite. Her attitude of bare toleration toward 
her husband, which would have been clear to a 
blind man, was, he flattered himself, wholly the 
result of his efforts to prove that husband un- 
worthy of her; and now he had come armed, and 


184 The Lady and Her Tree . 

confident of convincing her that Philadelphia was 
no longer possible for her as an abiding place. 
Having succeeded in this, he would, he told him- 
self, in a burst of abuegatory eloquence, offer to 
take her to the world’s end; and, in his ex- 
hilarated state, he entertained no thought of 
failure. 

One of the first of Katherine’s promised re- 
lapses into extravagance was the employment of 
a maid — a luxury that she had hitherto regarded 
as unnecessary and not to be dreamed of. The 
maid opened the door for young Mr. Pemberton, 
when he presented himself, and, having shown 
him into the drawing room, she carried his card 
to her mistress. 

When, five minutes later, Katherine entered, 
she found him nodding in a chair. Her entrance, 
however, aroused him, and he stood up, and 
apologized. His face was flushed, and his breath 
odorous. 

“I was at the Bassetts’ ball, last night,” he 
said, in explanation, “it was four when I got 
away, and then we played poker in Mifflin’s 
rooms until nine. I haven’t had a wink of sleep 
in thirty hours. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Yorke ignored his apology. She was not 


The Lady and Her Tree. 185 

in a mood for such confidences, but Tad failed to 
grasp the situation. 

‘ ‘ I saw this in the paper this morning, ’ ’ he 
pursued, holding out a folded copy of the Ledger 
just as he had held out a folded copy of the Her- 
ald on a former occasion. “I didn’t know 
whether or not you’d see it. Some cad put it in 
to injure you. I’ll bet it was Willington.” 

Katherine found a sea. on a sofa, and 3^oung 
Pemberton .sat down near her. She read the ar- 
ticle, hurriedly. 

“No,” she said, at last, “I had not seen it. 
It is very kind of them to mention my aunt.” 

“Kind!” exclaimed Tad, in the loud voice 
that usually goes hand in hand with even semi- 
intoxication, “kind! why it’s a stab in the 
back.” 

“I don’t understand it that way,” she re- 
joined, looking at it again. “I’m sure it says 
that Mrs. Rourke was ‘an estimable woman,’ 
that she did ‘ much good to the poor,’ and that 
she ‘ will be greatly missed. ’ ’ ’ 

“Yes, yes,” cried Tad, excitedly, “but what 
does it say about her husband, and his brother in 
the fish business? That’s where the stab comes 
in. It’s outrageous. After all I had done for 


1 86 The Lady and Her Tree. 

you, too. Why I had the Assembly book as 
good as promised for you, and now ” 

“Now that I am in mourning,” interrupted 
Katherine, quietly, “ of course I can’t go. Nev- 
ertheless I am grateful for your kindness. ’ ’ 

Tad looked at her earnestly for a moment. 
The black gown that she wore, seemed to him 
to enhance her loveliness. Her skin was all the 
clearer because of the sharp contrast, and her 
brown hair was never so rich in bronzes. She 
smiled as she expressed her thanks, and a dimple 
came into each cheek. 

“ I wish I weie sure of that,” he said, .suggest- 
ively. 

‘ ‘ Sure of what ? ’ ’ 

“ Your gratitude.” 

“Do you doubt it, then?” she asked, rather 
annoyed. 

He did not make a direct answer. 

“You see, Mrs. Yorke,” he began, drawing 
his chair closer to her, ‘ ‘ you see that notice in 
the paper means the end of you, socially, in Phila- 
delphia.” 

It was very bluntly put, and for a moment 
Katherine was in a manner stunned by the obser- 


The Lady and Her Tree . 187 

vation. She was, at all events, speechless for the 
moment, and Tad proceeded. 

People might in time — our people, I mean — 
have swallowed the fact that you had an aunt 
living in Fishtown ; they might have overlooked 
the story which I have heard and a good many 
others have heard, within the past week, that 
you were born 011 Spring Garden street. I say 
you might have been able to live all that down. 
There is Brokaw, for instance, who has managed 
to make people forget that his uncle married his 
housekeeper; and there is Mrs. Ferrell, who lived 
down the fact that her husband’s mother used to 
take in washing ; but when it comes to being re- 
lated to people that sold fish, why ’ ’ 

“ But I’m not related to any one that sold fish,” 
protested Mrs. Yorke, indignantly; “I’m no 
more related to the man Rourke mentioned here,” 
tapping the paper, angrily, “than — than you 
are.” 

Tad smiled, grimly, and drew his chair still 
closer. 

“ Perhaps not,” he acquiesced, discreetly, “per- 
haps not, but all the same, society doesn’t go in- 
to these fine points. The Assembly’s door is 
shut to you ; everybody you’ve ever known in 


1 88 The Lady and Her Tree. 

our set will cut you at the first opportunity ; you 
might as well live in Kamschatka as in Philadel- 
phia, f r all you’ll see or know of the people that 
are worth knowing. ’ ’ 

Katherine rose, her cheeks blazing with the 
anger that this arraignment had provoked. 

“And you ” she stammered, scarcely able 

to speak, so nervously enraged was she, “and 
you — you — come here and tell me this! Why ? ” 

Tad rose, too, and faced her. He was very 
close to her, and his alcohol-laden breath assaulted 
her at every word. Into his face had come a 
pleased expression, born of the self-confidence 
that possessed him in spite of Katherine’s display 
of temper. 

“Because,” he said, reaching for her hand, 
which she had clenched in her rage, ‘ ‘ because 
I am your one friend in all this city.” 

She drew her hand away and thrust it behind 
her. 

“ O, you are!” she observed, with a smile, 
more sarcastic even than her tone. 

“ Yes,” he answered, still blinded by his con- 
ceit to the real situation, “ I am. Your husband 
is false to you ; your ’ ’ 

“Stop!” she shrieked, her eyes blazing so 


The Lady and Her Tree. 189 

fiercely now that even this densest of dense bodies 
began to suspect that he had gone too far. ‘ ‘ Stop! 
I will not suffer another word from you. ’ ’ 

She brushed past him, overturning the frail 
chair on which she had sat, as she went, and 
pressed an electric button in the opposite wall. 
The sound of a tinkling bell answered the pres- 
sure, and in an instant the maid appeared. 

“Tizette,” she cried, imperiously, her whole 
frame a- tremble with anger and excitement, 
“show that person to the door! ” 

Even then he would have expostulated, but, 
as he opened his mouth to speak, she passed from 
the room into her boudoir adjoining, and his ut- 
terance changed to a muttered imprecation, ns he 
preceded the French girl out through the narrow 
passageway. 

Katherine heard the door close, and then, as 
though that had been the signal for which she 
was waiting, she threw herself down upon a 
cushioned corner-seat, and tears came to the re- 
lief of her tense nerves. 

After awhile she began to look at the matter 
more calmly and reasonably. She had dismissed 
young Pemberton because he had dared to de- 
tract from her husband’s honor, but she had been 


190 The Lady and Her Tree. 

annoyed, previous to that detraction, by state- 
ments that, however rude it may have been of 
him to make them, were, she could easily under- 
stand, probably true. They were in direct line, 
she saw, with the asseverances of Dr. Lewis ; 
and the declaration of the doctor that she had 
fallen among Pharisees came back to her with re- 
doubled force. It was hard for her to believe, 
nevertheless, that a community existed where 
one’s self went for so little, and one’s progenitors 
for so much. She had heard these stories of 
Philadelphia before, but had never taken them 
seriously. She regarded them in the same light 
that she regarded the witticisms about grass 
growing in the streets, but now she realized that 
in this direction there had been no exaggeration. 
Presently the door bell rang again, and when 
Lizette came in with a card, Katherine read upon 
it, with surprise, the name of Mrs. John Potts. 
There was one woman in the city, then, that 
could rise above the petty prejudices of her ilk. 
She dried her eyes, and her heart softened a little 
at this evidence of independence ; but before she 
had finished laving her reddened eyelids, she be- 
gan to -question whe ther Mrs. Potts had heard ; 
whether she had seen the article in the paper ; 


The Lady and Her Tree. 19 1 

and whether she knew about Spring Garden 
street. And then, suddenly, she remembered that 
Mrs. Potts’ mother was a Boston woman, and her 
husband a Baltimore man, and she began to un- 
derstand that it was possible for her to be different 
from those bigoted natives that were no broader 
than the city itself, from the Delaware to the 
Schuylkill. 

Mrs. Jack Potts, as she was called, a tall, slen- 
der young matron, with the air of a princess — an 
air that could have made of rags a regal adorn- 
ment — had come, really, to pay a simple call of 
condolence. She had taken a fancy to Mrs. 
Yorke on the occasion of their first meeting at a 
luncheon, given by the Countess of Rapsberg, and 
she was not of the sort to permit such minor 
considerations as plebeian kinsfolk, if such really 
existed — of which she had grave doubts — to in- 
terfere with the establishment of a friendship that 
she particularly desired. 

Her greeting, when Katherine appeared, was 
so heartily cordial and so earnestly sympathetic, 
that for a moment it was all either of them could do 
to keep back the tears that were evident in their 
voices if not on their cheeks. Her visit was a 
long one, and before she rose to depart the two 


192 The Lady and Her Tree. 

women had gone over together the whole subject 
of what one can do, and what one cannot do, and 
still retain a position in the inner circle of Quaker 
City society. Mrs. Potts was indignant at the 
snubbing to which she had been told Mrs. Yorke 
had been subjected, and her advice was not only 
to resent it, but to make, as she put it, the ‘ ‘ fight 
of your life to ride over those who have dared to 
treat you so shamefully.” 

“ I hate,” she said, as she was standing, ready 
to go, ‘ ‘ to be the bearer of gossip, but this mat- 
ter has so aroused me that I feel I must tell you 
the kind of people that have presumed to set 
themselves above you. Some Frenchman once 
said that many have lived on a pedestal that will 
never have a statue when dead, and that is the 
case here, in Philadelphia. You know, I sup- 
pose, that Mildred Cadwalader-Beech has been 
very ill. Well, do you know what the trouble 
was ? ’ ’ 

Katherine had not heard. Frankly, she said, 
it had not interested her. There was something 
about the girl and her mother that she detested. 

Mrs. Potts’ voice, as she conveyed the informa- 
tion, sank to a whisper. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 193 

“Shocking!” cried Katherine, in amazement. 
* ‘Are you sure ? ’ ’ 

“ Positive! ” 

“And what have they done with- ” 

“ O, it died, fortunately. And, mark my word, 
— that girl will be received everywhere next sea- 
son, just as if nothing had happened.” 

“Are they going to do nothing to the man? ” 
Katherine exclaimed. “Can’t they make him 
marry her ? ’ ’ 

Mrs. Potts laughed. 

“ He is, it appears, a composite creature,” she 
answered, ‘ ‘ and there is a law against polygamy, 
you know.’ 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE CONTENTS OF A SEA CHEST 

TT was not until some days after the funerax 
that Mrs. Rourke’s will was found. A cer- 
tain safe deposit company, with characteristic de- 
liberation, notified the heirs, just as letters of ad- 
ministration had been applied for, that the will 
was in its custody, and that it was, itself, the ex- 
ecutor. To Katherine’s surprise she learned that 
she was the chief beneficiary. Save for some 
minor bequests to two or three charities and to 
two or three old and faithful servants, the entire 
estate was devised to the testator’s “beloved 
niece, Katherine Lawrence.’’ Nor was the es- 
tate one to be lightly regarded. At a moderate 
estimate its value was upward of half a million — 
a monument to the expansive power of compound 
interest. 

Katherine’s first thought was of the independ- 
ence that this windfall would afford her. Though 
Newland’s habitual kindness and consideration 
for her had not changed a jot in spite of her per- 


The Lady and Her Tree. 195 

sistent and systematic indifference of manner to- 
wards him, she was none the less bitter. She was 
assured of his inconstancy, and nothing that he 
could do, no sacrifice that he could make, would 
heal the gaping wound through love and pride that 
this assurance kept always open. Her life with him 
was obnoxious to her. She had longed from the first 
to sunder the association, but she refused to become 
a burden upon again her step-father, and shrank 
from the notoriety that would ensue. With this 
fortune at her command, she could go abroad ; 
and her stay, she resolved, should be prolonged. 
The settlement of the estate, however, was not a 
matter of days but of months. The processes of 
the law are leisurely. 

Meanwhile there had been sent to the Salisbury, 
a curious old iron-bound seaman’s chest, with a 
label upon its top, bearing, in faded ink, the 
words : ‘ ‘ Private family papers of Katherine 

Rourke ; ’ ’ and with its coming there recurred to 
Katherine her aunt’s reference to the old letters 
that proved her ancestry, hidden away in boxes 
in the garret, inches deep in dust. 

Yorke innocently suggested that it should be 
sent to the general storeroom, for it was not an 
ornament, and in the hall it was an obstruction ; 


196 The Lady and Her Tree. 

but Mrs. Yorke would uot hear of this. She had 
it moved into her own room, and prepared to 
open it, but the key was missing, and a locksmith 
had to be sent for. 

The contents of the chest, when brought to 
light, were most interesting. Packet after packet 
of letters, the rich color of old ivory, were found, 
tied with rotting ribbons ; and to some there still 
clung remnants of sealing wax with the impres- 
sion of crested seals clearly visible. In one cor- 
ner, Katherine came upon several heavy, ornate- 
ly-bound books, with backs of brown leather, 
which, when opened, proved to be the diary of 
Katherine Lawrence herself, and rich in authentic 
glimpses of life in the colony, nearly a century 
and a half agone. But what proved most inter- 
esting of all, was a large sheet of parchment, il- 
luminated like an old missal, and bearing at its 
top in great old English letters, the legend — 
“ Family Tree of the Lawrences.” Its last rec- 
ord was now nearly a hundred years old, but its 
root bore the date 1513, and it was as many- 
branched as a banyan. 

Katherine was delighted. It was late in the 
afternoon when the locksmith had condescended 
to come, and just as this treasure was unearthed, 


The Lady and Her Tree . 197 

Yorke arrived from the office. The desire to 
communicate to some one the news of her discov- 
ery, the impulse to share with some one her joy 
over this certificate of ancient, if not indeed noble, 
birth — for she had not yet carefully traced the 
names, nor deciphered certain seeming hiero- 
glyphics — rose above all other considerations, and 
she called out, with such a ring of the old merri- 
ment in her voice, that Yorke rushed to her with- 
out stopping to remove his overcoat, hoping that 
his course of disregarding her all-too-apparent 
coldness, had, at last, produced the one result he 
desired. He could not imagine that anything 
had occurred to disabuse her mind of the suspicion 
that he knew held sway there, and yet he was 
hopeful that this even might have been swept 
away by his studied devotion. 

“ Newland! ” she had called, blithely. “ Come! 
look ! ’ ’ And when he entered she held up the 
.sheet of parchment to him. He, too, was inter- 
ested, and his interest was grateful to her, though 
his presence chilled, for the moment, the warmth 
of her manner as suddenly as it had been excited. 
He took the diagram from her hands, and here 
and there his eye lighted upon familiar names. 
His wife’s geneological line was certainly linked 


498 The Lady and Her Tree. 

with that of some of the oldest and best families, 
not only of Philadelphia, but of New York as 
well, and of Baltimore, and there were branches 
too, that ran off into Virginia. 

“And see where it starts! ” he exclaimed, sud- 
denly. “By Jove, Pink! You certainly are 
in it. Your original ancestor, I see, was a knight, 
who fought and fell under the Earl of Surrey, at 
Flodden Field. They evidently couldn’t ascertain 
the date of his birth, and so they put in the date 
of his death, instead.’’ 

Katherine looked over his shoulder and he ex- 
plained to her what she had failed to understand. 

“ O, isn’t it lovely! ” she shouted, excitedly, 

‘ ‘ Aiid to think we never knew anything about it. ’ ’ 

No man is so democratic as not to experience a 
thrill of pride over the knowledge that his fore- 
bears were better than their fellows, and the line- 
age of his wife is of next importance to his own. 
But what pleased Yorke far more, in this instance, 
than the discovery that Katherine’s line reached 
back to a knight who fell at Flodden Field, was 
her high spirits, and still more her use of the 
pronoun ‘ ‘ we. ’ ’ For upward of a month now, he 
had seemingly been out of her mind In no way 
had she ever referred to him in that time, much 


The Lady and Her Tree. 199 

less joined him with herself in any manner what- 
soever. Her joy she was sharing with him now, 
it appeared, though, in her sorrow over her aunt’s 
death he had been ignored utterly. His words of 
attempted comfort had been received in silence. 
To such mere acquaintances as had sent their 
cards as a delicate indication of their sympathy, 
she had acknowledged the thought by returning 
to them her own, but as for her husband, not a 
word had rewarded his efforts to lighten her grief. 
Several times he had thought again of making a 
clean breast of it all, as he had planned on that 
night when she went away, but the recurrent 
thought of that night steeled his will, and he had 
held to his original resolution of silence. Now, 
he flattered himself, it was coming out all right, 
after all. Time is the best of all salves, and the 
wound that it will not heal, is deep, indeed. 

They took some of the old letters with them up 
to dinner, and read them to each other across the 
table, between the courses ; and, when dinner was 
over, they dragged the chest into the drawing 
room and in a little while, floor, tables, couches 
and chairs, were strewn with musty relics of the 
past. In the midst of it all, Montie Willington 
sent in his card, and Yorke, insisting that they 


200 The Lady a?id Her Tree . 

should make no stranger of him, he was admitted 
to the disorder, and permitted to join in the in- 
vestigation of the treasures. 

The old letters delighted him. He found one 
from Washington, and another from Robert Mor- 
ris, and it was he that discovered, after some lit- 
tle search, the one for which they were all look- 
ing — the missive from young John Penn to Kath- 
erine Lawrence, after she had declined the prof- 
fered honor of his hand in marriage. The}'' had 
come across a reference to this billet-doux in her 
diary, and they had been speculating as to whether 
the original was in the collection. 

“ O, I say,” suggested Montie, when he had 
read this stately missive, so full of dignity and 
reverence, with all the s’s like f’s, “ I wish you’d 
let me publish this. I’ll have it photographed, 
and a facsimile made of it ; it will make a rat- 
tling good thing for our Sunday edition.” 

“I couldn’t think of it,’ - replied Katherine, 
taking it from him ; ‘ ‘ the idea of sharing any- 
thing so sacred, with the whole world ! ’ ’ 

But Montie was persistent, and when he left he 
had not only that particular letter, but several 
more, and an abstract of the family tree, and a 
bushel of gossip, culled from the diary. And, 


The Lady and Her Tree. 


201 


when Sunday came, Katherine was not a little 
shocked and mortified to find herself the heroine 
of a full-page story in the newspaper to which Mr. 
Willington contributed. They had resurrected, 
too, a picture of her that had done service when she 
was a belle at Narragansett Pier, and the article 
was headed in great staring letters : 

“The Tady and Her Tree.” 

It was on a very bright, crisp and cold Sunday 
in late December that the public was thus intro- 
duced to Mrs. Yorke’s ancestors, and they and 
she were freely discussed over the breakfast tables 
of many households. Nor did the discussion end 
there. The subject was the chief topic on West 
Walnut street, after church, that morning, and 
the men in the clubs talked of it over their ma- 
tutinal cocktails. 

The service at St. Mark’s being ended, Mrs. 
Cadwalader-Beech leaned over and asked Mrs. 
Brokaw, who occupied the pew back of her, 
whether she had seen it, and Mrs. Brokaw said 
that she had, of course, and then Mrs. Cadwala- 
der-Beech declared that she knew old Mrs. Rourke 
very well, indeed, and that she had always re- 
garded Mrs. Rourke as a type of what several 
generations of blue blood would do for a woman. 


202 The Lady and Her Tree. 

“Her bearing is so queenly,” she added, 
tritely, and Mrs. Brokaw agreed with her, and 
then, remembering something this same woman 
had said a month previous, she made a mental 
note that the hypocrites, as well as the fools, are 
not yet all under the sod. 

Mrs. Jack Potts talked of nothing else during 
her walk home from Holy Trinity, with Miss 
Basset,, and her abounding joy at her friend’s 
vindication was evident in every feature of her 
perfect face. Mrs. Pemberton told Mrs. Wistar- 
Rittenhouse that she meant immediately to pro- 
pose Mrs. Yorke for the Colonial Dames and the 
Acorn Club ; and Mrs. Wistar-Rittenhouse re- 
quested the honor of being allowed to second her 
nomination. 

Meanwhile Tad Pemberton was cursing his luck 
in the apartments of Dolly Foster on South Fif- 
teenth street, and, his temper rising to the point 
of overflow, he wound up by throwing a book 
at Dolly’s head, because she had chosen to 
chaff him a little, on not being able to drink as 
much as he once did. 

The Countess of Rapsberg, when she had fin- 
ished reading the article, lost not a moment in ad- 
ding Mrs. Yorke’ s name to her visiting list, from 


The Lady and Her Tree. 203 

which she had stricken it after the first Tuesday 
Dance ; and Miss Logan, who had stopped at 
home from church because her ‘ false front ’ 
was out of curl, ran in next door to tell old 
Mrs. Turpin all about it. 

Dr. Dick Turpin glanced over the paper, seated 
at a widow of the Philadelphia Club, where his 
red face, like a setting sun, was one of the Quaker 
City’s landmarks, and with an oath, and a mo- 
tion to the waiter for another “Scotch and Soda,” 
swore that he always knew that peachy creature 
was a born lady. He was well born himself and 
he couldn’t be mistaken. But the man that was 
more pleased than anyone else was Dr. Dayton 
Lewds, who made haste to call at the Salisbury 
that afternoon, and to congratulate Mrs. Yorke 
upon her complete vindicatijn. 

“To-morrow,” he said, delightedly, “3 7 ou’ll 
have the whole town at your feet. When you 
get it there, tread on it.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


A VISITOR TETTS A STORY 
HE trust and safe deposit company that had 



to do with the settlement of Mrs. Rourke’s 
estate imparted one day to Katherine the news 
that, if she required any funds, it would be glad to 
make her advances to any reasonable amount. 
These tidings were most welcome. Immediately 
she began her preparations for going abroad. 
She drew ten thousand dollars and deposited it 
with the Drexels. Against this, it was her plan, 
to have a letter of credit issued. In London she 
had friends, and at Vienna one of her step-sisters, 
who had married an Austrian count, was living. 
On the other side of the water she would certainly 
not be lonely, and on this side there was for her 
now no attraction. The publication of her pedi- 
gree had, as Dr. Lewis had predicted, brought 
her many cards, and many invitations, but she 
really experienced little satisfaction in this restor- 
ation to social favor. In that she was afforded an 
opportunity to return the snubs of Mrs. Cadwala- 


The Lady and Her Tree. 205 

der-Beech, Mrs. Wistar-Rittenhouse, Mrs. Bro- 
kaw, the Countess of Rapsberg, and some others, 
it was, of course, a delight, but, the battle being 
won, the trophies appeared less valuable in the 
possession than in the pursuit, and her desire was 
to escape from the scene of the fray. 

Of Philadelphia society she had learned quite as 
much as she cared to know. There were people 
in it, she had ascertained, that conscious of their 
right to place by reason of birth, were neither ex- 
clusive nor bigoted — people that would have 
flung the doors wide to all applicants of gentle 
demeanor, taste, education, cultivation — but it is 
not these representatives of the old families, she 
had discovered, who rule. The larger part of so- 
ciety in the city of Penn is governed by upstarts — 
by those who, having fought hard for the summit 
themselves, turn at once upon those who are 
fighting after them — invaders who, once inside 
the gates, join with the defenders to keep out 
their less speedy comrades. 

Katherine accepted the proffered membership 
in the Society of the Colonial Dames, and de- 
clined the honor of admission to the Acorn Club. 
Tor a place in the Daughters of the Revolution, 
she herself made application. 


206 The Lady and Her Tree. 

“ I should like to wear the badge abroad,” she 
said, in a burst of patriotism. 

Yorke heard of her intended European flight 
with ill-concealed dismay. At the moment it was 
seemingly impossible for him to accompany her, 
and he doubted that, were he able to go, his com- 
panionship would be welcome. His self-gratula- 
tion over her changed mood in contemplating the 
sea-chest and its contents was, he had discovered, 
premature, and the reaction had been more pain- 
ful to him than was the original coldness. If he 
might go with her now, undesired as his compan- 
ionship might be, he felt that he would be able to 
win back her confidence, and with confidence 
would undoubtedly come love. But affairs at the 
office were in the balance. The weight of a hair 
would send them either way. Moreover, the 
stocks and bonds that he still held were gradually 
climbing upward. It was possible that another 
three months would see him on his feet again — 
independent ; and it was a question whether he 
could afford to risk the financial possibilities of 
stopping at home, for the sentimental possibilities 
of going abroad. Sentiment, however, is some- 
times more valuable than gold and silver, and 
Yorke began to view it in that light. 


The Lady and Her Tree. 207 

“I have about half made up my mind, he 
said, one evening, as he sat reading his paper, af- 
ter dinner, while Katherine was studying a Bae- 
deker on the other side of the centre table, ‘ ‘ to 
drop everything, and run across with you.” 

She looked up with surprise in her face; and, 
amid the surprise, Yorke detected evidences of 
disappointment. 

“ You don’t seem overjoyed,” he added, a lit- 
tle nettled. 

” Don’t I ? ” she asked, coldly. “ Seeming is 
sometimes feeling. ’ ’ 

He returned to his paper ; his heart a lump of 
lead in his bosom ; but he did not read. His 
mind was busy with other things. In the face of 
such a rebuff, going was out of the question. 
After a while, he got up and went to the club. 
When he returned the clocks were striking two. 

When Katherine came in the next afternoon 
from a journey to the office of the International 
Navigation Compaii}' on lower Walnut street, 
laden with charts of the Paris and the New York , 
with sailing lists, and memoranda of prices for 
certain marked state rooms, Dizette met her at 
the door, with the information that there was a 
gentleman in the drawing room. He had been 


208 The Lady and Her Tree . 

waiting for over an hour, she said, and he would 
not give his name. 

It was nearing five o’clock and the lights not 
yet having been lit the drawing room was so in 
dusk that as she entered she failed utterly to 
recognize the person who rose, with his back to 
the windows, and came towards her. 

“ Don’t you know me, Kitty?” he asked, ex- 
tending his hand, and in his voice was that which 
carried her back years, and brought her childhood 
before her. 

“Alan! ” she cried, nervously, and yet gladly, 
“Alan! How delighted I am to see } t ou! ” 

“Are you, Kitty?” he asked, as if surprised 
at the cordiality of her greeting, “ I didn’t know 
whether you would be or not.” 

“ Of course I am,” she answered ; “sit down, 
while I turn on the electricity, and have Iyizette 
light the lamps. What a time it has been since I 
saw you ! Where have you been ? Tell me all 
about yourself. What are you doing ? ’ ’ 

The sudden glow in the room revealed a med- 
ium-sized youth, of weak face, a chin a trifle re- 
ceding, and eyes of the light blue peculiar to 
young kittens. He was a little loudly dressed, 


The Lady and Her Tree. 209 

and his clothes showed evidences of rough, if not 
long, usage. 

“ I’m awfully glad to have found you, Kitty,” 
he began, when Katherine had taken a chair 
near him; “I’ve wondered for a long while 
where you were. I went to the old place on Fifth 
avenue, but nobody knew there; and ’ ’ 

“But the folks at home knew,” she inter- 
rupted. 

He laughed a little affectedly. 

“ The folks at home! ” he repeated, sneeringly, 
“ O, yes, I dare say, the folks at home knew ; but 
you know I never go home. The governor has 
forbidden me the house, and he won’t let anyone 
write to me or see me.” 

“ You don’t mean it! O, now cruel! ” 

“Yes; isn’t it? However, I guess I can get 
on without them.” 

“And how did you find out where I was, 
then?” 

“ I saw an article in one of the New York pa- 
pers, copied from a Philadelphia paper, saying 
great things about you, and it mentioned the fact 
that you were living here. So I came over at 
once. ’ ’ 

“ You always were fond of me, wereu’t you, 


210 The Lady and Her Tree . 

Alan ? ” Katherine asked, playfully. “ I remem- 
ber how you used to take my part against your 
own sisters— But you haven’t told me where you 
have been.” 

“ O, I’ve been knocking about,” he answered, 
evasively, “I haven’t made much of a mark in 
the world. To tell the truth, Kitty, I’m afraid I 
never shall amount to very much.” 

” 0 , don’t say that, Alan. You’re ‘down on 
your luck,’ as you used to say, that’s all. You’ll 
come out all right, yet.” 

‘‘That’s what New always tells me,” he re- 
plied, a little more cheerfully. ‘ ‘ Your husband’s 
a brick, Kit! ” 

‘‘Yes!” returned Mrs. Yorke, in a way that 
was non-committal, but with a perceptible change 
in the cordiality of her manner. 

“ He is that,” the young man pursued. “ He 
wouldn’t tell me your address, nor his, because 
he didn’t want you to be botkered, but, by Jove, 
Kit, he has done more for me than my own flesh 
and blood. I’d be in the Tombs now, or at 
Sing Sing, if it hadn’t been for New. I’ll never 
forget ” 

“ O, Alan!” Katherine exclaimed, in horror, 
you surely never committed a crime ? ’ ’ 


The Lady and Her Tree . 2ti 

Alan Van Vrancken twisted about in his chair. 
He twined and untwined his fingers, and he 
looked at the ceiling. He had, he feared, been a 
little too precipitate. ’ ’ 

“No,” he said, at last, “I didn’t, Kitty; in- 
deed I didn’t ; but it looked that way, and a jury 
would have looked at it so. It was at a ball at 
the Manhattans. You know I used to go about, 
long after the governor had upset me. Well, at that 
ball I picked up a diamond sun-burst off the floor. 
It was a beauty. I’d been drinking all day, and 
I drank a lot more there at the ball, and somehow, 
instead of looking for an owner, why I stuck that 
thing in my pocket. Well, later, I met a woman 
that I knew, a music hall singer, and I was fool 
enough to give it to her. Somehow or other 
they discovered that I found it — or I thought they 
had — for they made a bluff of saying in the pa- 
pers that, if it was not returned on a certain date, 
they would take steps to put the — the — well, the 
fellow that found it, where he belonged. I tried 
every way to get it back, but the girl wouldn’t 
give it up, and then I lost sight of her, and I 
wanted to run away, but I was afraid that if I at- 
tempted it they’d nab me; and just as I was at 


212 The Lady and Her Tree. 

my wits’ end what to do, I went to New, your 
husband, and ” 

“But how did you find him?” Katherine 
asked, anxiously, “I thought you didn’t know 
our address.” 

“ Neither I did, I advertised for him. Put a 
personal ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ In the Herald f ’ ’ cried Katherine, excitedly. 

“Yes. And though they made a great mix of 
it ” 

‘ ‘ How a mix of it ? ” 

‘ ‘ Why you see I addressed it to him with his 
name spelled backwards, and I signed it with my 
name spelled backwards. That would have been 
‘ Nala,’ but they put an n for an 1, and it read 
‘ Nana.’ I said, meet me at the same place — he 
knew ; it was a saloon on Twenty-third street, 
near Sixth — What’s the matter, Kit? What are 
you crying about? Come, this won’t do, you 
know! I’m not worth it, old girl, really I’m not. 
O, please don’t cry, Kitty. I hate to see a woman 
cry!” 

But Katherine was crying as though her heart 
had been freshly torn in twain, whereas, it was 
only an old wound, reopened for the moment that 
it might heal the more quickly. After a while 


The Lady and Her Tree . 213 

she dried her eyes, and between convulsive little 
sobs she told Alan that she knew that she was very 
foolish, and begged him to go on with his story, 
which he did. 

“ There’s not much more tell,” he said hurry- 
ing to the end. “ New came and I put the mat- 
ter fair and square before him. I begged him not 
to tell 3 7 ou, because I didn’t want you to know — but 
somehow I’ve thought since that you deserved to 
hear what a man your husband is, Kit ; what a 
nobleman ! ’ ’ 

Here Katherine began weeping again, and Alan 
hesitated for a moment. 

“Don’t cry any more,” he said, pleadingly; 
“you 'haven’t anything to cry for. You’ve got 
everything any woman can want ; lots of money, 
social position, and the best husband that ever drew 
breath. Well,” he went on, “I told it all to 
him, and I told him, too, that the girl was some- 
where in Philadelphia, and that unless he could 
find her, and get that sun-burst from her — beg, 
borrow or steal it — I’d have to go to prison, and 
you would be disgraced. Well, what do you sup- 
pose he did ? ’ ’ 

“I know!” cried Katherine, “he found the 
girl " 


2i/| The Lady and Her Tree. 

“He told you!” exclaimed Alan, disappoint- 
edly. 

“ No, no, no,” Katherine hastened to protest, 

‘ ‘ he never breathed a word to me ; but I found it 
out, and— O, Alan! I have suspected him so 
wrongly, so cruelly, and all the time he has been 
— — ” and here her words were lost in the rush 
of tears through the reopened flood-gates of her 
emotion. 

“It seems,” said Alan, after another pause, 
“that I’ve brought an awful lot of worry and 
trouble even to those I love best, and what 
I want to do now, is to go away where I 
won’t be a bother any longer. I didn’t 
have the nerve to ask New to help me again, 
but you, Kit — you’ve come into a heap of 
money, you never expected, and I’ve come to ask 
you to give me the price of a passage to Europe — 
steerage, Kittie, anything, so that I can get away. 
Maybe the Count and Countess, if I once get to 
Vienna, will marry me to some daughter of a 
baron or something, and - — 

Katherine had risen, and was at her desk writ- 
ing before he had finished. When she returned, 
she handed him a slip of white paper. It was a 
check on Drexel & Co. He glanced at it, and 


The Lady and Her Tree . 215 

saw the figures 500 upon it, and then he caught 
Katherine in his arms and kissed her. 

“By Jove, Kittie!” he exclaimed, heartily, 
“you’re the right sort. It’s a pity the world 
isn’t made of such as you and New. I can’t 
thank you enough for this.’’ 

Katherine wanted him to stop for dinner, but 
he pleaded some excuse, and, after a few minutes 
more of desultory talk, he bade her good bye. 
A quarter of an hour later, Yorke let himself in 
with his latch key. 


CHAPTER XIX 


EIGHT AFTER DARKNESS 


r jpHE hair’s weight had fallen on the side of 
profit. The company of which Yorke was 
vice-president had weathered the storm of finan- 
cial depression. Its shares were selling above 
par. Its credit was rated excellent. Yorke’ s in- 
vestment in it had quadrupled. The stock mar- 
ket, generally, had advanced buoyantly. Several 
stocks that Yorke held were selling at figures above 
the prices that he had paid. From all points came 
reports of reviving business. There were a hun- 
dred things to make him jubilant, and yet he re- 
turned home with depressed spirits. In the face 
of Katherine’s rebuff it was difficult to carry out 
his resolve of going abroad with her, and, if he 
stopped at home, he felt sure the breach would 
widen. He was inclined to curse the fortune that 
had made this independence on her part possible. 
The brilliant light in the hall and drawing room 
accorded ill with his mood. He removed his 
overcoat, and having hung it upon the rack, went 


The Lady and Her Tree. 217 

into his dressing room, which was dark, and threw 
himself down upon the couch there, to think. 

The door between this little apartment and the 
adjoining bedchamber was closed, and upon this 
door, presently, there came a gentle tapping. It 
was Tizette, he supposed, coming with a message 
from Katherine, asking him to dress or not to 
dress, for dinner, according to her whim or her 
plans, as was now almost a nightly occurrence. 

“ Come! ” he called, a little roughly ; and the 
door opened, slowly. It was at his back and he 
could not see who entered. He waited a second 
for the expected request, and then, still lying 
there with closed eyes, he asked : 

“ Well! What is it?” 

For answer there was a rustle of silken skirts, 
and then a lithe, limp body fell upon its knees at 
his side, a head pressed hard upon his breast, and 
on one of his hands that rested there, he felt the 
wet of tears. The heart of the man broke sud- 
denly into great, throbbing pulsations. Amaze- 
ment, joy, sympathy — each was contesting for 
supremacy. He began stroking his wife’s hair, 
and then he put his arms about her shoul- 
ders, murmuring: 

‘ ‘ What is it, dear ? What troubles you ? ’ * 


218 The Lady and Her Tree . 

But for some minutes she made no answer. 
She knelt there, contrite, unable to frame phrases 
to tell him of her abject penitence. He tried to 
soothe her with kindly words. He lifted her 
head and wiped away her tears. The door 
through which she had entered had swung noise- 
lessly to after her, and the room was dark as 
Cimmeria. 

“ O, New! ” she cried, at last, “what a wick- 
ed, wicked wife, you have! ” 

“Wicked!” he repeated, a little surprised at 
the term, yet with a world of tenderness in his 
voice, “ Not that, Pink, dear; not that. I won’t 
let anybody say that — not even you.” 

“But' I am,” she declared, gaining courage 
from his contradiction, “ I am — I’m not the least 
bit worthy of you. I wonder you have put up with 
me as long as you have. I wonder you haven’t 
gone off and left me, and' ” 

“And what, darling?” 

‘ ‘ I was going to say, taken another and nicer 
and better and more reasonable and trusting wife 
— but, no, I won’t say that, because — O, New, 
dearest, I can’t bear even to imagine losing you.” 

Yorke fancied that he must be dreaming. Of 
course he was dreaming. What a fool he was to 


The Lady and Her Tree. 219 

think this was all real! He remembered that he 
had come in tired and worried, with his wife on 
his mind, and had lain down there in the dark, 
and had gone to sleep, and this was all a fabric of 
old Morpheus, whom he had known to play simi- 
lar tricks many a time. He pinched himself hard 
— very hard, cruelly, until he could have cried 
out with pain, and then he laughed a little in his 
sleeve that he should have thought that the pinch- 
ing was real. That was a dream too, of course, 
and a dream-pinch would never awaken anybody. 
It was a very pleasant dream that he had endeav- 
ored to arouse himself from, and if it was pleasant, 
why need he try to end it ? Katherine was re- 
pentant. He would hear what she had to repent 
of. It was doubtless some outrageous thing, fash- 
ioned of his own disordered imagination. And 
then he heard her saying : 

“Alan has been here, dear ; and he has told me 
everything. Can you ever forgive me, do you 
think, for having so misjudged you ? ” 

She was speaking very calmly now. Her tears 
had ceased. The dark had given her courage. 
One can say things in the dark, that the light 
would stifle. 


220 


Tlie Lady and Her Tree. 


There was certainly nothing outrageous in this 
statement. It seemed very probable — very real. 

“ O, why didn’t you tell me, yourself?” she 
pleaded. “ Do you know I blame you a little for 
not having told me?” Though — but, of course, 
you were in honor bound not to ! ” 

He caught her in his arms, ravenously, and 
drew her face down and kissed it. 

“ It is not a dream, then,” he cried, excitedly. 
“Do you know, Pink, I feared it was! And 
Alan has been here, has he ? And he told you 
the whole story ? Alan is a good fellow, and I 
regret nothing I have done for him. He has re- 
paid me a thousandfold.” 

He held her close to him, and kissed her again 
and again ; and then she fell to weeping once 
more for joy. And, after a while, they both got 
up, with their arms still about each other, and 
Yorke lit the light, and they stood looking into 
each others’ glad faces, until they actually laughed 
aloud at their own sentimentalism ; and then they 
looked about the room, in an embarrassed way, and 
Katherine’s eyes fell upon an unopened envelope 
lying upon the floor. 

* 1 What is that ? ’ ’ she asked. 

“I’m sure I don’t know,” her husband an- 


The Lady ajid Her Tree. 221 

swered, picking it up, “I brought it up from 
down stairs. An invitation to something, I 
fancy.” He handed it to her and she opened it, 
hastily. 

“ O, New!” she cried, when once her gaze 
rested upon the enclosed card, ‘ * what do you 
think it is ? ” 

“I’m sure I don’t know.” 

“It’s the Assembly book ,” she declared, delight- 
edly. “ We’ve actually got it.” 

“Then there’s nothing more in Philadelphia 
for us to gain,” he replied, pleased at her joy. 

“Nothing!” 

“ Of course we can’t go, though,” he went on, 
‘ ‘ you being in mourning ’ ’ 

“ O, no, we can’t go,” she interrupted hur- 
riedly. “ Tet me see. The first is January io. 
By that time, dear, we shall be in mid-Atlantic. ” 

“ We? ” he repeated, questioningly. 

“ Certainly, we” she replied, as if no other 
plan had ever entered her mind. “ I shouldn’t 
think of going, without you.” 

The; End. 



BLAYLOCK & BLYNN, 

Importers, Designers and Manufacturers of 

x^Hats and Furs, 

....AGENTS FOR.... 

A. J. White., Herbert Johnson, Lincoln Bennett & Co., 

LONDON. 

Hahig, Vienna. Borsalino Giuseppe & Fra., itaey. 

824 Chestnut Street, 

PHILADELPHIA. 


STOCKS AND BONDS 

INVESTMENT SECURITIES O O O BOUGHT AND SOLD AND CARRIED ON 

A SPECIALTY. FAVORABLE TERMS. 



L. H. TAYLOR & CO., 

Cor. 5th and Chestnut Sts., 


PHILADELPHIA. 



MEMBERS OF THE 

PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK O O O PRIVATE WIRE TO 

STOCK EXCHANGES. NEW YORK, BOSTON AND CHICAGO. 



TRA06 MASK. 


O PPOSITE the Post Office you will find a Merchant 
Tailoring Business conducted upon modern busi- 
ness principles. A system that renders to the 
purchaser the best results for the least money. 


Wflfl. H- DIXON 



17 South flinth Street, 
PHILADELPHIA. 


Our direct importations contain excepti* ual values. 


Inquire for our $8.00 Trouser Specialties. 


BENJAMIN JOHNSON, MEMBERS 

W. B. KENDALL, NEW YORK AND PHILADELPHIA 

C. H. WHITLOCK. STOCK EXCHANGES. 


Kendalls Whitlock, 

BANKERS AND BROKERS, 

S.W. COR. THIRD AND CHESTNUT STS., 


Buy and Sell Stocks and Bonds for Investment or on margin in all the 
Exchanges of this country and Europe. 


PRIVATE WIRES TO NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE. 


ACCOUNTS AND CORRESPONDENCE SOLICITED, 


STAINED QLAJJ 

PAINTINQ 

FRESCOINQ 


PftPER HftNUINQ 
UPHOLSTERINQ 
FURNITURE 


ROBERT STULB 

DECORATOR 

1635 CHESTNUT JT. 

pi-|ILADELpi-|IAy 


DECORATIONS SKETCHES 

OF THE ® and EJT1MATEJ 

PERIODS FURNISHED 


VICTOR WHISKY. 


Best for Medicinal or Family Use. 

Thos. H. Gills Son, 

840 N. SECOND STREET. 


PHILADELPHIA. 


JOHN A. GILL. 


TELEPHONE NO. 1848. 


1 


MORELTON 


INN 


• • 


^COTTAGES 


50 MINUTES BY STEAMERS, FROM CHESTNUT ST., 
PHILADELPHIA. 


30 MINUTES BY PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD, 
BROAD ST. STATION. 


ON THE UPPER DELAWARE RIVER, AT 
TORRESDALE, PA. 


MORELTON INN COMPANY, 

PROPRIETORS. 

TORRESDALE, PA. 

William V. Massey, 


» ' 


TREASURER AND MANAGER. 


m 


A DEliiGHTRJli SAIL- 


Upper Delaware 


fo ^RISJOL A^ID PetJr[n| 

Stopping at Bridesburg, Tacony, Riverton, Torresdale, Anda= 



lusia, Beverly and Burlington. 


The 

Jm 

Commencing 

Favorite 


Saturday, 

Steamers 


JUNE - 1st. 





Columbia John A. Warner 
and Twilipht. 


Will leave Chestnut Street Wharf at 7. 30 and 11.45 A. M.; 2.00, 3.00, 
4.45 and 6.00 P. M. Returning leave Bristol, 7.00, 7.30 and 10.00 
A. M.; 2.15, 4.00 and 5.00 P. M. Mr. Geo. D. Woodill, late of 
CARNCROSS’ Opera House, and his well known ocherstra will 
accompany the Steamer COLUflBIA on her 2.00 P. M. trip and 
render choice selections of music. 

Spring, Fall and Sunday schedule, see daily papers. 


EXCURSION TICKETS, 40 CENTS. 


ft 



The 

Pennsylvania 

•^—Railroad 

Is just, as strongly entrenched • 
in the hearts of true Philadel- 
phians as are their genealogical 
traditions. 

They all Use it 'When they 
tfavel on pleasure or business, 
and their friends frorn other 
cities always rnaKe it a point 
to land in Broad Street Station. 

This great Station is in the 
. very heart of the city and 
Whether one lives Up-town or 
down-town or in the charrned 
section, it is equally convenient. 

The trains are the finest in 
the world, the road-bed the 
best, the safety appliances the 
rnost cornplete, and the territory 
reached the rnost cornprehensive. 

“The Lady and Her Tree,” 
always Use one of the farpoUs 
Lirniteds, and so do all her 
set, because they Want the best 
of everything. 

The Pennsylvania is Known 
all over the world as the 

STANDARD RAILROAD OF AflERICA 








mi 







x° «?* ^ 

ON 0 t f | I t’ 

0 V \^' s 


. o v ^ *S S> A 

s s xO <V y 0 * X * 

cv cv* v ^ ^ v& 

•w • (&%& - ^ v 


* NT 'W'XS^ > - 

' «*• .. ^'*,rf’>° 

'jryJ *t > ' »0‘ * 

* .p -X* 




'••4'^ s K'*--y , .t-..v 




•/ O fl 1 ^ ,*\ 

v. * ft ^ a\ 0 ^ c . ^ 


rP v ' 


* 

v< 

U H : ^ ®« 







I A *> 




V* , 

" - / A 

* 'Kt c- at 


^ : x° ®* 

*\rP O.V 



^ v s 
« o Cf 

* 4 -y * 

- ,y ^ - 


^ '» •>* ■ 0 -’ 

5 H ° ' o> 

. ^ A 



P A A 

U ^ 







_,.,,,, „ . o5 ^ 

<* ^^Py/iP^ o* na ^ -. 

* *- 

^ ^ ! I ' ” \V 

r a Ac> 4 y zj', 

° ip ^ J jp 

% % A ° % 

r V~ „«$ * ^‘ V ^ v ^ A " ^ ^ ' 

s *& / 0 . ^ .A <,!5 ** 

, y? , > 1 * * -<f c ° “ ■• » ^ 

c ° **ia 7 ?*y * %■ 4 * 

' ,3“ : ^ ^ ° 4 
h*: ^ 

: ' r " i * ,-,') o_ * A--' 1 'V' of . 

* V*v*'*^> 




%*< 

: /' % -. 

"r> v> 





<* o 
^ 40 

6 0 A 


r~> 

~C> 




\ ^u.* 

*!l'‘ 

V . S 









>* % 



y 0 9 \ 




^ -A 

^ *' i 


: 't 

K- ’ x« °<. 







<x' 



llifi 

i V ( ! 
v »{ 

$ 

1(1 

n. 


f vi » 

fH/j 

•Jfli 

Hi 

■.*' ! Hi 


w • 

if >1 

5 !'h, i 

*} let 

>■ • u 

1 1 » ; i 

\hii 

f * * c > 


i < * *. f £> f 1 

i *■ ; •} j ( j * 

,« , $ . f. . - : i 9 . 
> 1 W . 5 

f h H i 

r r. .* . v • * * 

i : , -■• • ; - 

i . : \ 

ij I 

f i • i \ i * 
;}yf ifiliJ 

f . % • < • 

\ » i » 


1 1 \ r v » * \ > 

f • > 

i 4 • ^ 

I* M I » W 

k>m m 


; (rl ]!;; 

a \ •' V/ ( i X,i -i l ' j 4 1 

'ilnh * * ; 

k 

2 ?/’|f »l I 4 £ l (I 

l • , '« *- t ' f {' 

1 , * } ' t - > , t ; I . • i 

•J; ! ' f ; :■( 

[4;? ;! ' ■[■Hi 

iW HU i t ? ' 

/ ■ > 1 " i t* I / ; l * 

1 ) J i J i > C • i ■ * > ) J 

: ■ > 'j • • 

> V i V J ’ h J h • 1 1 

/ / f h iu | * 

’i * i 

f-i/f H Si rf I 

«* lit t i i 

i •: ? ; . ■ 

• < « y t? i i i l »{ L 
' i , 1 ' f : ? ' Til • 


,y i < • 


■ 

u ; If 4 

i 

liU ; 


/.i MM.i 

/ i i ft* i'; ♦ 1 •* * i > t. 
1 * V * ' f ■■' * /• i v 7 

' ) ! 'fh 

vinHimttii 


tyn 

•fix 


l \ ft 


■' i i » • r i ■ 1 a ’ i' ' 

' 5 / "i ■ • / ’ k m • » 

|i< 7 *' • 


r ; f - ! , ,/ . 
* > ■' l r - J* > S 

. ^ , ... 

!l )V,1 {tf 

li/M fi 


ffii 

5 rfj 


* ; * i" 

>k I « J 


- • • v • 

-* v ; i 

i i » • 

I I • A 

j % / ‘ i 

1*1 if ^ i 

nhh 




j • i ■ i • ‘ - 

, . 1 • , 

• » I i r f \ 

klvf .-t » 

U h \ H 4 
■J -. } 

i*,. > ; Pi * M i 

AS / * J I' 


i 1 i ffcfii? 

ivihi- >• 

if * If vi 

; ii tf ■ » 


b f i r\ * 

5 I;!' | ' 


v % i f* 

W M ; 

, j 

•r ^ # i i 

1 f 

k ' ill 


pvr 

pW 

f K j 


^ ■ ft * 
*■ : • lb : 

. ! s i 


f ’ •‘It )< If 

• • >/ »{ (i i ( * •*'. i ' « 

' |iF?3*; r i ri 
iipii 4 Kh> :* 
r.rl* 7 * * : lUfiu ; 

r r KHfmn»»H 

■‘.jv-iJv'L -■ 

•'[' if ' I ^ 'll ‘ C / 
/(It * ,>. f?<, 

> li (fit; 
liipi vt. if ijL/i 

> t ' >v :* k . wf : 
n i ; i i \ \ > V ./ ' • * l 

I / / fr l f f ; , * • * \ r » .• 

j U df / ^ 

; ? -• i 


m 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 










